How do small animals and plants break rocks?

Answer 1

Some marine organisms secrete chemicals that can dissolve rock. Plant root growth penetrates small cracks and crevices in rock and spreads them further apart. Other plants can attack the surface of rock directly, extracting nutrients. Just the action of walking and scurrying about causes rocks to rub against other rocks, slowly breaking them apart.

Answer 2

a plant has roots right? So when the plant is inside a crack of a rock and starts growing, the crack is opened up further until finally the rock breaks. This is generally not a very effective mechanism.

Answer 3

Animals can break up rock by walking on them, causing rockfalls, by chemical reactions to their body fluids, by digging burrows (in poorly cemented sandstone, for instance), by depositing seeds in cracks and crevices of rocks which may lead to plant root growth and weathering, and by creating tunnels and gaps between rocks which allows freeze/thaw cycles and chemical weathering by acidic rain or groundwater to occur. The human animal, however, has thousands of ways to break up rock into smaller pieces!

Answer 4

The downward growth of plant roots is a powerful mechanism of biophysical weathering. Plant roots grow into cracks and crevices in rocks thereby expanding them and eventually breaking them apart over time. When a plant begins to grow on a fractured or faulted block of a rock mass, its roots finds base in the soil trapped in the little space opened on the rock and as the plant continues to grow bigger so does its roots too and it penetrates deeper also, this tends to give more accommodation for the plant and by so doing cracks the rock more and more eventually breaking it into smaller mass.

Answer 5

Small animals and plants can break rocks through a process called biological weathering. Plant roots can grow into cracks in rocks, causing them to break apart as they expand. Small animals like burrowing insects and earthworms can also contribute to rock fragmentation by moving through the soil and creating spaces that lead to rock breakdown.

Answer 6

1. Animals break up rocks with their claws as they move around. 2. Animals waste materials help in the decay of rocks.

Answer 7

Plant roots grow into cracks in rocks.

Answer 8

The plants hits it.