Characteristics of Living Things

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Characteristics of Living Things
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To be considered living you must have certain
characteristics and perform certain activities.
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1. Made of Cells

• All living things are made up of one or more
  cells
• Cell basic unit of structure and function in
  living things

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2. Perform complex chemical activities

• Building up and breaking down chemicals
• Building up
• Simple Complex
• Breaking down
• Complex Simple

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Metabolism

• Sum total of all the chemical reactions that
  occur in a living thing
• BUT WAIT!
• Before an organism can metabolize, it needs to
  get chemicals from its environment!

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Nutrition

• Taking chemicals from the environment and
  breaking them down
• both consumers and producers need this to survive

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Consumers

• Need to get food from their surroundings
• Ingestion - eating, getting food into the body
• Digestion - food is broken down into simple
  substances
• Excretion/egestion getting rid of wastes

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Producers

• Make their own food.
• Photosynthesis a process using light to make
  their own food

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3. Growth, Repair and Development

• Growth An increase in size and number of cells
• Repair The ability of an organism to heal
  certain wounds
• Development the maturation of an organism

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4. Movement

• Necessary to
• find food and shelter
• avoid possible injury/death
• Plants can move certain parts towards sunlight

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5. Responding to the Environment

• Stimulus any change in the environment, or
  surroundings that produces a response from the
  organism.
• Homeostasis the ability of an organism to
  maintain a balanced environment inside their
  bodies

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6. Reproduction

• The ability to produce a new organism
• Necessary for the survival of the species, not
  the individual
• Two types sexual (two parents) and asexual (one
  parent)

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How do we know a car is not living?
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We know that a car is not living because it does
not perform all of the required activities on
its own