life processes

life processes are the basic processes in living organisims whic are necessary for maintaining their life. the basic life processes are:

MRS NERG OR MRS GREN VIDEO

movement: It's a simple fact, most animals move. Humans (like you) can move because your body is supported by an internal skeleton - that's right, you are just a bag of bones! living things require energy to move. three reasons why living things move are:

a. to look for food

b. to look for shelter

c. to escape from danger.

take a look at the skeleton of humans and some animals!!! it allows living things to move their body.

grizzly bear moving to find food.

plants movement

plants cannot move from one place to another ,they have parts like the stem that move to track the movement of the sun and the roots move underground to find water.

watch the videos to understand more

REPRODUCTION:

Animals can live happily all their lives, growing, eating and moving around, but if they don't reproduce (make babies) they won't have anything to show for themselves in the future - their species will quickly die out.

All animals reproduce. Human babies develop within their mother for nine months before they are born. They grow into children, adolescents, and eventually, adults.

The human life cycle is pretty simple. Look at the picture below, where do you fit in?

But not all animals reproduce in this way.
Birds lay hard-shelled eggs that hatch and produce helpless chicks. Marsupial mammals, like kangaroos give birth to tiny babies (about the size of jelly babies) that spend a long time in their mother's pouch before they are able to face the big wide world.

And what about frogs? Probably one of the most amazing ways of reproducing - and you can see it in your garden pond every year.

Have a look at the frog's life cycle. How does it differ from the human life cycle?

Sensitivity

living things can respond to changes around them.

Your senses let you know what is going on in the world around you. Humans have five senses: hearing, sight, smell, touch and taste. They are controlled by five sense organs: the ears, eyes, nose, skin and tongue.

The ears, eyes, nose, tongue and skin are the five sense organs.

Animals rely on some senses more than others. Hunting animals, like the cheetah, need very good eyesight to find their prey. Nocturnal animals often have very large eyes to maximise the amount they see at night, but also rely heavily on their sense of hearing.

Nutrition

Nutrition is just a complicated word for something we all like doing - eating!

All animals, including humans, eat to live.They take in food at their mouths, munch it with their teeth, and the teeth break it down so it can be taken into the stomach. All the nutritious bits of the food are absorbed into the body through the intestine, and the rest comes out the other end!

Chewing is very important - it starts the process that breaks down our food. Most mammals have teeth to chew their food. Their teeth are adapted to their diets, but they usually have some combination of the three types of teeth that are found in human mouths: incisors, canines and molars.

Look at the human teeth below. Can you identify the incisors, canines and molars?

Excretion

Excretion cleans up after respiration.

Respiration is a chemical reaction that takes glucose (sugar) and oxygen to produce energy. But it also produces water and carbon dioxide as bi-products.

Excretion gets rid of carbon dioxide, water, and other, possibly harmful, substances from your body.

Your lungs excrete carbon dioxide as you breathe out, your kidneys filter out nasties to produce urine, removing nitrogen waste from your body, and your skin sheds excess salt through sweat.

Remember there is one type of waste product that is not excreted from the body - poo! That's right, although it is a part of the body's waste, it is not a bi-product of your metabolism like urine is - it is expelled from the body, not excreted!

Respiration

All animals respire. A lot of people think respiration means breathing - this is not true. Respiration is a chemical reaction. It occurs in every cell in your body.

Get a better view of the cell. remember a cell is the basic unit of all organisims.

So what is respiration?
During normal human respiration, glucose (a type of sugar that you get from food) reacts with oxygen to produce energy. The energy is needed for growth, repair and movement. Water and carbon dioxide are bi-products of respiration - they need to be excreted.

difference between breathing and respiration

So why do people get respiration confused with breathing?
Well, respiration usually requires oxygen, and animals get their oxygen by breathing.

All vertebrate animals that live on land have lungs. When we breathe in, the muscle below the rib cage (called the diaphragm) is pulled down, and air gets sucked into the rib cage, filling the lungs. Blood cells circulating through tiny blood vessels near the lungs pick up oxygen and carry it around the body to the sites of respiration. Air is then forced out of the lungs as the diaphragm bows upwards.

So do all animals breathe in the same way?

Birds are different from humans in many ways. As you probably know, they fly, and their bodies are well adapted for flight. Their lungs are very efficient: they take in much more oxygen per breath than other animals do. Because they get this extra oxygen they have lots of energy to direct to the flight muscles in their wings - they can flap away for hours!

Frogs and toads have lungs, but when they are in water they can also breathe through their skin.

Some animals don't have lungs - fish are the obvious examples.

Growth

Babies can't stay babies all their lives!
They have to grow up! When first born, human babies are completely dependent on their parents for everything - food, water, shelter, clothing.

As babies grow into children and adolescents, humans are still dependent on their parents for many things - they have a lot of growing up to do, and don't become independent until they reach the age of about 18 when they go to college or move away from home.

Think of all the things that your parents still do for you.
They feed you, house you, act as your taxi service, and still give you pocket money!!!
(Aren't they great!!!)

Compared with most young animals humans have a very cushy life! Birds are encouraged to leave the nest as soon as they can fly and gather food for themselves. And most animals that live in the sea don't have any contact with their parents at all - they have to survive by themselves from day one.

So how do we grow? Like other mammals, humans grow at a fairly steady pace until they reach adulthood. Every day as they get older their bodies are changing. Their skeleton grows with them, each bone getting bigger over time.

The pictures below are trying to show you how hands grow.