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Amoeba is one of the fascinating organisms in nature. It has no brain, nervous system or eyes, but it can move and digest organic material! It is a unicellular or single-celled organism named after the Greek shape-changing God of the Sea called Proteus. This article will teach you about the Amoeba – its movement and digestion.
Amoeba has a nucleus (no true nucleus), mitochondria or other organelles in their cells. They lack the ability to reproduce sexually and instead live as parasites which rely on other organisms to reproduce, grow and divide into smaller daughters called trophozoites. These organisms do not come under a single taxonomic group as these microscopic organisms are found in every major lineage of eukaryotic living beings. These organisms live in water or other liquid environments.
Amoeba is a blob-like single cell organism that moves by twisting, crawling, and slithering with pseudopodia or cilia. Again, these structures are thin hairlike structures that can slide along each other using adhesion and then, on contact, parts of the front of the cell break off, leaving behind trailing streamers or filaments.
Sometimes its movement is referred to as locomotion and Amoeboid movement. Amoeba cells migrate through their environment by altering their shape in response to changes—the reason why they got their name after the Greek shape-changing God the Sea. Above all, during movement, amoebas experience physical stretching as well as chemical changes that alter their shape and behaviour.
Amoeba is unicellular eukaryote organisms which need food and water to live. In fact, asexual reproduction is also possible in some amoebae. These eukaryote organisms move by extending pseudopodia (specialised cellular extensions) from their cell body. These pseudopods can capture objects, such as bacteria or other amoebae, use them for digestion and expand into a form of motility. Moreover, its digestive system is astonishingly complex, and in order to digest food, it will start moving again after it eats some food.
Digestion in Amoeba is known as intracellular digestion. Moreover, it also has a digestive system that allows it to absorb nutrients from its environment through channels called trophozoites which are similar to sponges; it uses food particles to form cysts called trophozoites before they become mature gametes which are fertilised by sperm cells held in the female’s body cavity.
So, now that you know about the Amoeba – its movement and digestion, let us summarise what we learnt. Amoeba is the simplest living thing on earth. Yet, they have special qualities that make them unique and fascinating creatures. They are single cell animals. An amoeba can divide itself into two or more parts. Sometimes an amoeba moves around by extending its ‘legs’. Sometimes, it glides from one place to another by means of hairlike structures called pseudopods.
Amoebas are live mostly in freshwater. They eat bacteria and protozoa, which are food for them. Moreover, Amoebas also change shape when they need to move around. They have a nucleus. The nucleus is in charge of the cell, where all of the Amoeba’s components stay.
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