Wikijunior:Biology/Introduction

Biology is the study of Life. It helps us understand many things, such as how our body works, how our body keeps warm, and what we are made of. Biology is very important to know. Some subjects in Biology are Genetics, Zoology, Botany, and Ecology.

A Biologist is someone who studies Biology.

What is life?

Living things are different from things that are not alive. It is usually easy to tell what is living and what is not, except with really small "microscopic" life forms and colorless, lifeless-looking mosses.

Here are some properties of living things. Some non-living things can have some of these properties.

Living things can change and grow. However, volcanoes also change and grow.

Living things can move. However, the wind is moving air, and water always moves downhill.

You probably want to know how plants can move. They can grow, and sometimes move more rapidly than that, in response to things such as the sun or water. One example is that sunflowers will turn during the course of the day so that they are always facing the sun. Another example is that if a plant gets tipped over, it will want to turn upwards.

Living things can reproduce. That is they can produce copies of themselves, over and over. This is the most important difference between living and non-living things.

In order to reproduce, living things need nutrition, that is chemicals and energy sources in order to assemble the materials needed to reproduce themselves. In this process , living things must excrete waste. Waste is material which is of no use, or harmful.

Animals, bacteria, and plants are examples of living things. Rivers, mountains, oceans, and soil are examples of non-living things, but often they are homes for living things.

Cars and tables are not living things because they cannot reproduce themselves.

Levels of Life

Living things can be many sizes. Also, biologists organize the structures and groupings of living creatures according to size. A living creature is called an organism. Organisms can consist of single cells or multiple different types of cells grouped into tissues and organs. From small to large, these are how living things are grouped.

• Cells

  Most cells are only a few microns wide, so small they can only be seen with a microscope. A micron is one thousandth of a millimeter.

• Tissues
• Organs
• Organ systems
• Organisms
• Populations
• Communities
• Ecosystems
• Biomes
• Biosphere

  The biosphere is the whole network of living things on planet Earth — eight thousand miles in diameter, twenty five thousand miles around the equator.

Each thing in the list is made up of the things above it. For example, communities are made of many populations and populations are made up of many organisms.