Characteristics of Living Things

Characteristics of Living Things

The Most important characteristics of living things are: movement, feeding, development, breathing, reproduction, sensitivity and excretion.

In addition, all living beings must be born and die.

All living things share life processes like growth and reproduction.

Most scientists use these seven processes or life characteristics to determine whether an organism is living or non-living.

Living things are made of cells.

Living things obtain and use energy.

Living things grow and develop.

Living things reproduce.

Living things respond to their environment.

Living things adapt to their environment.

Defining a living thing is a difficult proposition, as is defining “life”—that property possessed by living things. However, a living thing possesses certain properties that help define what life is.

Complex organization

Living things have a level of complexity and organization not found in lifeless objects. At its most fundamental level, a living thing is composed of one or more cells. These units, generally too small to be seen with the naked eye, are organized into tissues. A tissue is a series of cells that accomplish a shared function. Tissues, in turn, form organs, such as the stomach and kidney. A number of organs working together compose an organ system. An organism is a complex series of various organ systems.

Metabolism

Living things exhibit a rapid turnover of chemical materials, which is referred to as metabolism. Metabolism involves exchanges of chemical matter with the external environment and extensive transformations of organic matter within the cells of a living organism. Metabolism generally involves the release or use of chemical energy. Nonliving things do not display metabolism.

Responsiveness

All living things are able to respond to stimuli in the external environment. For example, living things respond to changes in light, heat, sound, and chemical and mechanical contact. To detect stimuli, organisms have means for receiving information, such as eyes, ears, and taste buds.

To respond effectively to changes in the environment, an organism must coordinate its responses. A system of nerves and a number of chemical regulators called hormones coordinate activities within an organism. The organism responds to the stimuli by means of a number of effectors, such as muscles and glands. Energy is generally used in the process.

Organisms change their behavior in response to changes in the surrounding environment. For example, an organism may move in response to its environment. Responses such as this occur in definite patterns and make up the behavior of an organism. The behavior is active, not passive; an animal responding to a stimulus is different from a stone rolling down a hill. Living things display responsiveness; nonliving things do not.

Growth

Growth requires an organism to take in material from the environment and organize the material into its own structures. To accomplish growth, an organism expends some of the energy it acquires during metabolism. An organism has a pattern for accomplishing the building of growth structures.

During growth, a living organism transforms material that is unlike itself into materials that are

like it. A person, for example, digests a meal of meat and vegetables and transforms the chemical material into more of himself or herself. A nonliving organism does not display this characteristic.

Reproduction

A living thing has the ability to produce copies of itself by the process known as reproduction. These copies are made while the organism is still living. Among plants and simple animals, reproduction is often an extension of the growth process. More complex organisms engage in a type of reproduction called sexual reproduction, in which two parents contribute to the formation of a new individual. During this process, a new combination of traits can be produced.

Asexual reproduction involves only one parent, and the resulting cells are generally identical to the parent cell. For example, bacteria grow and quickly reach maturity, after which they split into two organisms by a process of asexual reproduction called binary fission.

Evolution

Living organisms have the ability to adapt to their environment through the process of evolution. During evolution, changes occur in populations, and the organisms in the population become better able to metabolize, respond, and reproduce. They develop abilities to cope with their environment that their ancestors did not have.

Evolution also results in a greater variety of organisms than existed in previous eras. This proliferation of populations of organisms is unique to living things.

Ecology

The environment influences the living things that it surrounds. Ecology is the study of relationships between organisms and their relationships with their environment. Both biotic factors (living things) and abiotic factors (nonliving things) can alter the environment. Rain and sunlight are non-living components, for example, that greatly influence the environment. Living things may migrate or hibernate if the environment becomes difficult to live in.

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