Life In A Drop Of Water (1947)

what is it closely living things are everywhere let's investigate this water is there anything in it what are these white dots through the lens we can see shapes and movement could these be alive if we had many lenses working together in a microscope we would find that these dots look like this through a microscope we can see these things made thousands of times larger than they actually are we can look into a world of life that is usually unseen a world where countless thousands of these plants and animals may be living in a single drop of water but why do the things in this water seem so unusual is it only because we have never seen them before are these roots we see each day are they alive just as we are let's watch them to find out this is a single the simplest form of life and yet it is just as large as this animal which contains thousands of cells can it be alive in the same way many objects in this water contained thousands of cells and yet we could only see white specks until we looked at the water through a microscope the cells of this tumbling ball contain a green material that is like the green material in leaves and ass this is a singlet this star shaped body is made up of eight cells and they also contain the green material the tiny green plants in our bottle use the sun's energy to make food just as large plants such as trees do all of the animals must find food they cannot make their own as the plants do they must eat the plants or else eat other animals which have already eaten plants we call the green plants producers because they can make their own food and we call the animals consumers this animal is an amoeba how does it move what does this movement due to its shape this part of the amoeba is called a false foot as it flows the amoeba is always ready to capture food watch what happens to this smaller animal that swims in between two of the amoebas false feet the animal is trapped and the amoeba slowly flows around to enclose it the single-celled amoebas on our bottle moves finds food and adjusts it as we do ourselves now watch these animals how do they swim these hairs beat the water to move them along the animals also use these hairs to sweep food into their bodies the animals in our water never stop moving how does movement help them to live some move by means of long whip-like parts and they sometimes use the whip for capturing food but look at these they are green and yet they are moving are they plants or animals no one knows for sure since they produce their own food like plants and yet swim like animals but they are alive just as this star-shaped plant is alive and whether they are plants or animals if they are alive they reproduce some joined together before reproducing then after joining they divide one animal divides in the middle and becomes two each half is now a complete sell a whole animal and each one will now eat grow and divide again some plants reproduce by division - but look at these you can see that the cells have not separated each one of these things from our bottle takes in nourishment grows and reproduces we can see that they are alive all of the animals move in some way movement helps to keep them alive for as they move they consume food the plants produce food but must have sunlight there are hundreds of kinds of living things in our jar of water there are so many shapes and colors and kinds of movements that the microscope has revealed to us and there are so many of each kind