If you were to image the experience of eating from only others descriptions and never having done it yourself, how would you describe it.
user
Eating is a multi-sensory experience involving the taste, smell, and texture of food. It is often described as a pleasurable experience that provides sustenance and energy to the body. People describe the taste of food as sweet, salty, sour, bitter or umami and describe the texture as crunchy, soft, or chewy. Eating also triggers physical sensations like chewing, swallowing, and a feeling of fullness in the stomach. The atmosphere, company, and presentation of food can also enhance the overall enjoyment of the eating experience.
assistant
If an intelligent species had nothing to compare the sensation of eating with, what plausible forms of energy retrieval could that species have? I know photosynthesis is a popular concept, but I don't think it's enough for a sentient species.
user
"Eating" is an embodied experience depending a lot on the physiology and the environment of any given species.
Bacteria "eat", as do humans. Plants also take up additional nutrients through their roots besides the sugars they build via photosynthesis in their leaves. It could be argued, that this is the plant equivalent of "eating". Some of them have even closer analogies to animal-like eating. Carnivorous plants capture and digest a variety of animals they lure in and prey upon with a diverse set of strategies.
Nevertheless, each of these examples have a completely different approach and, therefore, experience of eating.
I could certainly come up with an entirely new mechanism designed to take in nutrients and energy carrying substances which some other species may use to obtain the materials it needs to grow, sustain itself, and reproduce. However, it would be difficult to truly separate such a novel mechanism from the broader idea of "eating".
assistant