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What is an amoeba? |
An amoeba is a special type of single-celled organism (living thing.) People have lots of cells. We have muscle cells, skin cells, bone cells, blood cells, and many other types—and there are trillions of them, each too tiny to see! An amoeba only has one cell, but it is just as alive as we are! It still eats, it still grows, and it still moves. It’s very tiny though, and the only way we can see one is with a microscope.
Amoebas don’t have a certain shape. Their shapes actually change quite a bit! They are filled with a jelly-like substance called cytoplasm and they can shift it around in very helpful ways. They don’t have legs to move around on, but they can make fake legs by extending parts of their bodies and pushing that jelly-like stuff into it. They can then pull themselves along and move!
They can also wrap their bodies around their food and surround it. That’s how they eat, since they don’t have mouths like we do! They like to live near their food, so places with a lot of microscopic life, like warm ponds and soil, are where you’re most likely to find them.
Shape Shifting
It may be hard to imagine an amoeba shifting its cytoplasm around and changing its shape, but you can make a model of an amoeba with a water balloon (and a grown-up to watch you.)
The balloon is like the amoeba’s body and inside is the water, which represents the jelly-like insides that can move around.
Have your grown-up fill up the water balloon just a little bit. It needs to be able to be squished in your hand with out popping. Now take a coffee mug. How can you get the amoeba (balloon) to fit through the handle of the coffee mug? It’s going to be a squeeze! You’ll have to shift around the water in the balloon to do it. This is a lot like how an amoeba gets from point A to point B!
