Are there any multicellular forms of life which exist without consuming other forms of life in some manner?

Question

The title is the question. If additional specificity is needed I will add clarification here.

Are there any multicellular forms of life which exist without requiring the consumption (destruction) of other forms of life in some manner? Thus purely on inorganic material.

I do understand that the definition of life is a semantic distinction, so for this discussion I will assume the one Wikipedia provides:

"Life is a characteristic distinguishing physical entities having signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased (death), or because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate. Biology is a science concerned with the study of life."

I am open to considering alternative suggestions.

Thank you.

Answer 1

Yes, plants!

Plants are autotrophs. While Animals and fungi are heterotrophs. Have a look to the wikipedia articles. In short, autotrophs organisms are organisms that synthesize their own compounds from inorganic compounds. Heterotrophs organisms are organisms that synthesize their own compounds from organic compounds.

Therefore, any multicellular plants are multicellular organisms that "exist without consuming other forms of life" (with the exceptions of carnivorous plants).

Answer 2

There are multicellular organism which do not actively eat other organisms, however, there are no organisms period who do not kill other organisms.

Trees, and other vertical plants, evolved in the first place in competition for sunlight. For plants, being in the shade is like smother or starving a human since they literally use sunlight to create and create food and oxygen. Plants carry out complex chemical war against a wide range of other life forms from microbes to other similar plants.

Plants don't eat other organisms, save indirectly, but they do kill.

All multicellular organisms have an immune system that wages and unrelenting slaughter against microbes which in turn are constantly assaulting multicellular organism.

Lastly, every individual organism and probably all strains and species, display other individuals, strains or species just by existing. No energy is wasted in the biosphere. If something is living in one place or niche and then dies, the energy it was living on becomes available for something else. Conversely, while lives it prevents that other thing form evolving to fill the niche, or as individual moving into the niche.

Just by our very existence, we kill.