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The movie was really funny.
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The flick was incredibly humorous. o things like move and think and even just to stay alive like when I eat a salad and my body breaks down the lettuce and carrots into energy that I can use to power my brain or my legs to run a marathon sixth living things adapt to their environment like when the polar bear’s fur turns white to blend in with the snow or when a bacteria evolves to survive antibiotics and seventh living things are made of cells and they need other cells to survive
4 billion years ago, something very strange happened on this planet we call it life; and I dare any person any of you to tell me that it isn’t the most interesting thing that has ever happened. Thankfully, for all of us, it is still happening - as much if not more than ever. It is squishy, slippery, slimy, sticky, and spiky; and you’ll find all the shapes - moss-shaped, mosquito-shaped, Manatee-shaped, u-shaped, and all the sizes too - from tiny to tremendous and everything in between.
Biology is the study of this thing we call life; we study biology for a whole bunch of different reasons - from the obvious, like making new medicines, to the not so obvious, like learning how to identify misinformation. We use biology to describe anything that life does. Quick - are you breathing right now? That is a biological process.
Life does a lot of stuff, but it’s not so easy to pin down what life is like. Okay, for sure that ant is alive; it responds to its environment, like the crummit just found; and it must reproduce, based on how many of these ants I see coming right now. But other things respond to their environment too - like if that’s our definition, is fire alive? Is a computer virus alive? Is the robot vacuum I call my personal Butler alive? No, I’m a bit biased as a biologist and a living thing, but life is the most interesting thing to have ever happened on Earth and we are not even sure what it is.
Hi, I’m Dr. Sammy and this is Crash Course Biology. Wait, am I alive? But I am alive right, because we just introduced some serious uncertainty here. Life feels like something you know when you see it, but humans have wrestled with how to define it for centuries. Like, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle thought the ability to grow, reproduce, and react to inner and outer forces set life apart from non-life. He was off track with some other observations, like he thought that women have fewer teeth than men and that eels are made of mud, but on the subject of life he was really on to something.
Modern day biologists tend to agree that life involves a state of chemical balance that reproduces and evolves over generations. In fact, that’s also the definition that NASA uses should they ever see signs of such a thing beyond Earth - a self-sustaining chemical system capable of evolution. But for now, here on Earth, generations of scientists have developed a list of seven characteristics that sort the stones not alive from the stonefish definitely alive - we know you’re there stonefish, you can’t trick us no matter how good that disguise is.
First, living things keep their inner conditions steady as outer conditions change and that’s called regulation. Like, on a scorching hot day when I am dripping sweat and my dog is panting, our bodies are using two different strategies for the same life-sustaining goal - regulating our temperature.
Second, living things respond to their environment. That includes the dramatic, like when a fast and furious cheetah sprints after a gazelle, or house cats imagining that they’re cheetahs but they’re actually batting at house flies - but it’s also the slow motion stuff of the plant world, like the turn of a flower towards the Sun or a Vine twisting on a branch.
Third, living things reproduce, passing on genetic information to their offspring. That includes the bouncing baby giraffe who inherited her father’s eyelashes and their mother’s extra thick tail hair, but it also includes a single-celled yeast splitting in two, making more of itself in its own image - oh yeasty the 52nd, carrying on the family name.
Fourth, living things also grow and develop based on the instructions in their genes. Reading those instructions triggers a tadpole to turn into a frog or a teenage boy’s voice to change - unfortunately jeans can’t prevent those instructions from being read the day before his solo of ‘Oh Holy Night’. Terrible timing there when all in one night your voice goes from Mariah Carey to Barry White - oh yeah baby, it’s a bit of a mess.
Fifth, all living things process energy to do things like move and think and even just to stay alive. Like, when I eat a salad and my body breaks down the lettuce and carrots into energy that