If there was grass…

This is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of Semiosis. Octavo, the botanist, explains what plants tell us about the overall ecology:

“But the presence of the wheat worried me. The wheat was a lot like Earth grass, and if there was grass, then there were grazers, maybe animals like gazelle, moose, or elephant. And if there were grazers, then something hunted them. So far we had seen only small browsers and predators like little land crabs with trilateral symmetry, but we had found bits of big crab shells — and of big stone-shelled land corals with stinging tentacles. None of us went barefoot anywhere.”