The further you go up the food chain , the lower the biomass of the organisms , collectively . On land , Plant life is the most abundant form of organism in an ecosystem , because it gets almost 100 % of it ' s energy directly from the sun , which is nearly endlessly abundant , and almost all of that energy goes into the production of further plant matter . Herbivores primary consumers come next , as they eat the plants , and only the woody inedible parts are not consumed . Predators secondary consumers eat the herbivores , but energy from the plants is wasted because the herbivores respire , generate heat , etc , and there are larger portions of the animal that are inedible bones , hair , teeth , claws , therefore wasting that energy . Eating predators , especially primate , apex predators is a stupid idea . People often throw around that moral thought experiment of would it be okay for a super advanced alien race to round up humans and farm them for food ? The point is moot . They wouldn ' t do it . It ' s inefficient . They ' d just farm cows and other herbivores , like we do , if they were doing it purely for food . It would be endlessly more sensible to simply feed the hungry people with whatever you were feeding the farm humans . You ' re just wasting energy , otherwise .