CHARACTERISTICS OF LIVING ORGANISMS
you know that a horse is alive, but a steel girder is not. However, it is not always so obvious whether snmething is alive or not - is a dried-out seed or a virus particle living or non-living? To try to answer questions like this, biologists use a list of characteristics that living organisms show.
Living organisms:
* Respire
* Show irritability (sensitivity to their environment) and movement
* Nourish themselves
* Grow and develop
* Excrete
* Reproduce
The opposite page gives more detail of the characteristics of life.
You may se othe similar lists of these characteristics using slightly different words. You can remember this particular list using the word RINGER. It gives Ringer's solution its name. This is a solution of ions and molecules that physiologists use to keep living tissues in - it keeps the cells alive.
As well as the bharacteristics in the 'ringer' list, living things have a complex organisation that ir not found in the non-living world. A snowflake or a crystal of quartz is an organised collection of identical molecules, but even the simplest living cell contains many different complex substances arranged in very specific structures.
Living things also show variation-the offspring are often different from one another and from their parents. This important in adaptation to the enviroment and in the process of evolution.
you know that a horse is alive, but a steel girder is not. However, it is not always so obvious whether snmething is alive or not - is a dried-out seed or a virus particle living or non-living? To try to answer questions like this, biologists use a list of characteristics that living organisms show.
Living organisms:
* Respire
* Show irritability (sensitivity to their environment) and movement
* Nourish themselves
* Grow and develop
* Excrete
* Reproduce
The opposite page gives more detail of the characteristics of life.
You may se othe similar lists of these characteristics using slightly different words. You can remember this particular list using the word RINGER. It gives Ringer's solution its name. This is a solution of ions and molecules that physiologists use to keep living tissues in - it keeps the cells alive.
As well as the bharacteristics in the 'ringer' list, living things have a complex organisation that ir not found in the non-living world. A snowflake or a crystal of quartz is an organised collection of identical molecules, but even the simplest living cell contains many different complex substances arranged in very specific structures.
Living things also show variation-the offspring are often different from one another and from their parents. This important in adaptation to the enviroment and in the process of evolution.
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