I am reading into your comment but I am thinking you are considering that the transient and seemingly non-stable nature of a lot of human and animal activity im

I am reading into your comment but I am thinking you are considering that the transient and seemingly non-stable nature of a lot of human and animal activity implies that Gaia cannot be an Earth-level macroscopic scale organism comparable to the human body. I think that if you consider the replaceable and transient nature of the molecules and cells in traditional organisms, you will see more correspondences between the two. Also imagine how at the microscopic level (even macroscopic level), humans and animals change quite a bit day-to-day..even moment to moment. So the busyness and seemingly "unstatic" nature of Earth-at-large is no reason to think of it too much differently than a traditional organism. And considering two further things makes for even more interesting conversation: 1) there's no super-clear distinction between life and death..there's a massive difference in function and activity along the development and decay cycles that are possible for animals. 2) Animals without limbs or with added tools(extensions of our limbs) are quite workable. This is only meant to add to your conversation; I'm not really detracting because I agree it's not in the same sense but rather a different class of a being. Oh, and one more thing: Animals' collections of physical cells are also home to a large number of cells from a WIDE VARIETY of different "species" of bacteria and viruses..so many of which can basically take a person either up or down in health by a large factor. So this is analogous to the Earth which is home to a great diversity of humans, animals, plants, and so on. Beautiful really. Except for that which isn't.