Neal delivers. I recently learned that viruses are not considered living being, but I'm nevertheless happy they're included here because they're both relevant and interesting in this context.
Size of Life
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Re: Size of Life
#52Re: Size of Life
#53It seems to be like some of the scales slightly off? If you are looking at the ladybird (ladybug) with the amoeba to the left, the amoeba isn't an order of the magnitude smaller - it would actually be visible by the human eye (bigger than a grain of sand)? Indeed, the amoeba seems the same size as the ladybird's foot? Similarly, this makes the bumblebee appear smaller than a human finger (the in the adjacent picture)…
Re: Size of Life
#54Neal delivers. I recently learned that viruses are not considered living being, but I'm nevertheless happy they're included here because they're both relevant and interesting in this context.
Re: Size of Life
#55It reminded me of Operation Neptune (1991): each level starts with just one channel, probably percussion, and as you progress through the rooms it adds and removes more channels or sometimes switches to a different section of music. It is unfortunately all sharp cuts, no attempts at smoothing or timing instrument entry and exit. A couple of samples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0LNaatyoQk is an hour of gameplay revelling in “the dynamic and sometimes beautiful music of Operation Neptune” using a Roland MT-32 MIDI synthesiser; and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPxEdQ4wx9s&list=PL3FC048B13... is the PCM files used on some platforms (if you want to compare that track with the MT-32, it starts at 28 minutes).
Re: Size of Life
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#59Re: Size of Life
#60It seems to be like some of the scales slightly off? If you are looking at the ladybird (ladybug) with the amoeba to the left, the amoeba isn't an order of the magnitude smaller - it would actually be visible by the human eye (bigger than a grain of sand)? Indeed, the amoeba seems the same size as the ladybird's foot? Similarly, this makes the bumblebee appear smaller than a human finger (the in the adjacent picture)…
I came to the comments to express surprise that amoebas were so large. It appears they vary wildly in size (as small as 2.3 micrometers... but up to 20 cm, or nearly 8 inches). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoeba#Size_range
Only the next row above it, with Pelomyxa, is indeed an amoeba and one that is very frequently encountered and which usually has sizes not much less than 1 millimeter and sometimes it can reach a size of a few mm.
The true amoebas are much more closely related to humans, than to xenophyophores (giant marine unicellular living beings) or to plants.
Besides the true amoebas there are also a few other kinds of unicellular eukaryotes with shape-shifting cells, e.g. foraminifera, radiolarians and others, but already in the first half of the 19th century it was recognized that those other groups change their shapes in a different way than the amoebas, so they were classified separately, even if the term "amoeboid cell" has always been used about any cell with variable shape.
The true amoebas are related to the group formed by animals and fungi, and there are some amoebas that have a simple form of multicellularity, so it is likely that some of the mechanisms needed for the evolution of multicellularity have been inherited from a common ancestor of animals, fungi and amoebae.
The multicellular or multinucleate amoebae that belong to Myxomycetes (one of the kinds of slime moulds) can reach much bigger sizes, e.g. a diameter of up to 1 meter, because they do not have the size limitation that exists for simple unicellular eukaryotes.