No, we can’t say that micro-organisms are animals; atleast not with the definitions of what we consider an animal to be according to morphological characters.Further, micro-organisms include a wide range or organisms including the bacteria, the unicellular prokaryotes and even viruses and viroids. All these have varying properties and it would not make any sense if all of them are considered animals.Though if we crudely look at the animals and plants as it was done in the Two System Classification, we can characterize animals as mainly having heterotropic mode of nutrition and having cells lacking cell wall. If we classify in that direction, many unicellular eukaryotes, i.e. the ‘today's’ protists will come under this group.But still this won’t be an apt classification as the first difference would be that micro-organisms are mainly unicellular. Some of them are even photosynthetic. Moreover only heterotropism and lack of cell wall will bring together many species which have other contrasting characteristics.So no, even if a micro-organism has some similar characters of animals, it can’t still be termed an animal. Afterall, just because Euglena is photosynthetic, you don’t call it a plant.Hope that made sense.
We can treat humans as good and bad bacteria, some of which makes it sick, while others try their best to conserve it. Agent Smith, from the Matrix, describe humans as more like a virus.“I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.”Thou Smith did compare humans to cancer, a disease, as well.
Viruses surely are ‘micro’ but it is not possible to call them ‘organisms’. It is uncertain whether viruses fall in the category of ‘living’ or ‘non living’. I believe viruses to be non living. This is due to the fact that a virus does not actually have a metabolic process. It does not grow. It does not divide. Study of virus-host interaction shows that every aspect of a viral infection is brought about by the host rather than the virus.The virus does not go towards its host. It cannot crawl or walk towards the host. It is just present. It enters the host body just like any dust particles may enter.For example, if you take influenza virus. A person sneezes and the virus is launched into the air. It just remains there doing nothing. Another individual inhales them with the air. So we cannot basically blame the virus for infecting the person. It is the host who inhaled the virus.Similarly if you see at the cellular level, a virus particle may interact with any cell in the body. But it cannot infect them all only because these cells do not possess the necessary receptors. So basically all these virus particles interacting with such a cell which is not susceptible to the virus gets eliminated. Of the many virus particles infecting a person most of them get destroyed even before entering any cell. Hardly a few of them may succeed. That is the reason why ‘viral load’ is an important factor in a viral infection.After interaction between the cellular receptor and the viral ligand the host cell engulfs the virus. Here also there is no active role played by the virus. Instead the host machinery is involved.Likewise every step in the virus life cycle is carried out by the host itself.A virus is nothing but a genetic material covered by a protein coat. So all a virus does is replicate. That too, in most cases is carried out by the host machinery.The question is, how do you define ‘life’. If you think replication is enough to be called as life, viruses are living. If you think ‘metabolism’ is necessary, viruses are non living.Another point I want to add is about the ‘giant’ viruses that are recently being studied. I have not read much about them, but it seems they have some metabolic machinery and researchers are trying to answer the question about whether they are ‘alive’.
Motile bacteria can move pretty quickly, relative to their body size - here's an article that goes through all the calculations: How Fast Is Fast and compares Vibrio with the speed of various animals, etc. So if we take the 100 body lengths/second, and assume that nothing affects this rate if the bacteria is enlarged to car size (in reality, most bacteria are small enough that Brownian motion has a large effect on their movement - but let's set such considerations aside...)According to wikipedia, Family car, cars range from 4.30 to 4.80 meters in length - so multiply that out and you get 430 meters/second, or 1548 kilometers/hour (about 962 miles/hour, if you prefer that instead of metric.) Pretty fast - but a bacterium the size of a car would have a lot of other problems to deal with - most bacterial cell biology happens on a much smaller scale! What you have when we consider food spoilage is probably a good mixture of bacterial chemotaxis and motility (as they eat up the nutrients at the point of innoculation, they will start to seek out places with higher nutrient concentration and move towards them), and cell division, which as has been pointed out already, can be extremely fast under favourable conditions.
Identify factors that are significant to organism districution and abundanc ein a lake. What is...?
Factors: light, oxygen, salinity, temperature, nutrients and minerals. Eutrophic lakes have too much primary production. That is, the photosynthesizers (algae, some bacteria, plants) are making too much glucose/food molecules. This allows the primary consumers to proliferate, as there's lots of food. However, these consumers use up a lot of oxygen - so you get an anoxic zone. Runoff (like fertilizers) from surrounding areas can cause such eutrophication, as the producers suddenly have an influx of nutrients for growth. An oligotrophic lake is the opposite in that there is a lack of nutrients and much less primary production. This makes the waters clearer and more abundant in oxygen, so higher organisms like fish can live in oligotrophic lakes.
Why is my classroom considered to be an ecosystem?
Would this answer my question? My classroom is considered an ecosystem, because the biotic community is interacting with the abiotic. The biotic (living) elements being; students and teachers, the abiotic (non-living) elements; tables, markers and the atmosphere. The following are a couple interactions between these two communities which form an ecosystem; -Students use paper to write on. (Abiotic: paper, biotic: students) -Both, teachers and students need oxygen which they inhale from the atmosphere to survive. (Biotic: students and teachers, abiotic: the atmosphere.)
What is water pollution?Water pollution can be defined in many ways. Usually, it means one or more substances have built up in water to such an extent that they cause problems for animals or people. Oceans, lakes, rivers, and other inland waters can naturally clean up a certain amount of pollution by dispersing it harmlessly. If you poured a cup of black ink into a river, the ink would quickly disappear into the river's much larger volume of clean water. The ink would still be there in the river, but in such a low concentration that you would not be able to see it. At such low levels, the chemicals in the ink probably would not present any real problem. However, if you poured gallons of ink into a river every few seconds through a pipe, the river would quickly turn black. The chemicals in the ink could very quickly have an effect on the quality of the water. This, in turn, could affect the health of all the plants, animals, and humans whose lives depend on the river.Photo of air pollution from a smokestackThus, water pollution is all about quantities: how much of a polluting substance is released and how big a volume of water it is released into. A small quantity of a toxic chemical may have little impact if it is spilled into the ocean from a ship. But the same amount of the same chemical can have a much bigger impact pumped into a lake or river, where there is less clean water to disperse it.Water pollution almost always means that some damage has been done to an ocean, river, lake, or other water source. A 1969 United Nations report defined ocean pollution as:"The introduction by man, directly or indirectly, of substances or energy into the marine environment (including estuaries) resulting in such deleterious effects as harm to living resources, hazards to human health, hindrance to marine activities, including fishing, impairment of quality for use of sea water and reduction of amenities." [1]Fortunately, Earth is forgiving and damage from water pollution is often reversible.Via :http://www.explainthatstuff.com/...
Why shouldn't we genetically engineer/modify microorganisms?
inspite of her answer being voted down, I could desire to accept as true with Nicole C. the main reason maximum cancers expenditures are increasing is using the fact human beings stay longer than they have been a hundred or maybe 50 years in the past. interior the twentieth century human beings have been way lots extra in all hazard to succumb to infectious illnesses which incorporate influenza and pneumonia than to stay long adequate to get maximum cancers. maximum cancers is brought about with the aid of mutations interior the DNA and because DNA is being replicated someplace on your physique at any given time, the longer you reside the lots extra in all hazard you're to enhance some maximum cancers. As for the question of genetically changed ingredients, i in my view don't have something against it. inspite of media paranoia approximately 'frankenfoods,' there are actual no study proving they have a detrimental result on human wellness. quite a few study element at harm to the interior reach environments the place genetically changed plant life are grown, yet even those study have improper designs. people who're great afraid of ingesting genetically changed ingredients tend to no longer in all hazard comprehend the way those ingredients are created. at first, human beings have been genetically modifying nutrition because of fact the 1st farmers began breeding their plant life to be hardier, to undergo extra and tastier fruit or prettier flora. fantastically much all the plant life you notice have been changed from their unique varieties with the aid of human beings. the only distinction is that we now have the technologies to actual insert genes to alter those characteristics. there is likewise lots hype approximately say, fish genes being positioned into the DNA of potatoes. besides the shown fact that this is important to comprehend that once you have that small piece of DNA from the fish, there's no longer something inherently fish-y in it. we've the comparable DNA as fish, as plant life, and merely approximately all existence on earth. The DNA merely codes for various characteristics. So while you're technically putting DNA derived from a fish right into a plant, you do no longer make some variety of mutant fish-potato. For extra evidence of the advantages and the aptitude hazards of genetically changed organisms, i prefer to recommend the information superhighway website below.
Are bacteria and viruses in the oceans considered also as zooplanktons?
virus can never be called as zooplanktons as they only live in a host.no bacteria may be called a zooplanktons(this statement is according to my knowledge). zooplanktons are mostly protozaons like the radiolarians and the ciliates.zooplanktons takle phtyoplaktons as their food source.
Grammatically living is a present continuous expression, a rhetoric of everlasting optimism.Biologically it signifies metabolism utilising energy at cellular level requiring nuronal , endocrinal controll and regulated by genetical coding. Life span of a living organism is short due oxidative stresses that eventually leads cellular degeneration and death . Life & living represents the reproducing capcity to sustain the life's continuation which is not to be seen in other "non living" constituents. Planets etc are integral part of universe are so far proven to be lacking the biological imperatives of a living being.Rivers are water bodies, product of geological changes and their flow sustained by ice rains and are not considered as living.