Life processes facts for kids
Biology is the science that studies all living things. It helps us understand how plants, animals, and even tiny germs work. Biologists learn about how living things grow, change, and interact with their world.
Living things have special qualities that make them alive:
- They react to things around them, like light or touch.
- They interact with their environment, including other living things.
- They use food to get energy for daily activities. This is called their metabolism.
- They can make more of their own kind, which is called reproduction. This helps their species continue. Sometimes, in groups like ants, only a few individuals reproduce, but the whole group works together to survive.
Sometimes, what looks like one living thing is actually several living things working together. For example, a lichen is a mix of a tiny algae and a fungus. They live so closely that they help each other survive, even if they don't reproduce together. This close relationship is called symbiosis.
Contents
What Living Things Do
Living things perform many important processes to stay alive and healthy. These are often called life processes.
How Living Things Function
Physiology is the study of how living parts work. This includes how cells, tissues, organs, and whole bodies function. It helps us understand how our hearts beat or how plants make food.
Making New Life
Reproduction is how living things create new individuals of their own kind. This can happen in many ways, like animals having babies or plants making seeds. It's key for a species to continue existing.
Getting Energy from Food
Digestion is the process where living things break down food. They turn it into smaller pieces that the body can use for energy and growth.
Reacting to the World
Living things respond to things around them, called stimuli. This could be moving away from danger, a plant growing towards sunlight, or your body making enzymes to digest food. In animals, the nervous system often helps with these quick reactions.
Other Important Processes
Living things also do many other amazing things. They grow bigger, and their cells change to become specialized for different jobs (like skin cells or muscle cells). Plants use photosynthesis to make their own food from sunlight. Animals can go through metamorphosis, like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly. All these processes help life continue.
Modern Discoveries About Life
New ideas from fields like molecular biology and cell biology help us understand life even better. They show us the tiny details of how living things work.
Cells and Tiny Molecules
All life on Earth uses the chemistry of carbon. Every living thing is made of tiny units called cells. Inside these cells are long, complex molecules like proteins and nucleic acids. These molecules, along with water, are wrapped inside thin membranes to form cells. This is true for all life we know!
How Systems Stay Balanced
Living things are like "open systems." This means they are always taking in and giving out materials and information from their environment. They work to keep themselves stable and balanced inside, even as things change around them. This balance is called homeostasis.
They do this by using food for energy (metabolism), staying balanced (homeostasis), growing, reacting to things, and reproducing. All these actions help the individual living thing survive and help its species continue for a long time.
Related Pages
