Everything from mountains and oceans to plants and animals can be found in our immediate surroundings. All living things have the ability to breathe, consume, grow, move, reproduce and use their senses.
Nonliving things do not have the ability to feed, grow, breathe, move, or reproduce. They are devoid of any senses.
Living things have “life,” even if they do not show obvious symptoms of it at the time. For example, a tree is unlikely to react in the same manner that a human might. It would not react if we hit it, and it may not be able to move about freely after that. Despite the fact that the indications of life presented by them are not readily apparent, this does not rule them out as non-living.
Living Things
There are living organisms that exist and are alive, and they are composed of microscopic structures known as cells. They develop and demonstrate locomotion or movement. They go through a metabolic process that includes both anabolic and catabolic responses.
Through the process of reproduction, living entities are capable of creating a new life that is distinct from their previous existence. There is a limit to the length of time that living creatures can live and they are not immortal.
Cellular respiration is a process by which living creatures obtain energy, which is then used by cells to carry out their duties. In addition to excreting waste from the body, they digest food for energy. Birth, growth, reproduction, and death are the stages of their life cycle, which can be summarised as follows:
Animals, birds, insects, and human beings are all examples of living organisms.
Characteristics of living things
Locomotory motion is exhibited by living things, which means that they move. When an animal moves, it does so because it has specific locomotory organs, such as the longitudinal and circular muscles that allow earthworms to move through the soil surface. In order to capture sunlight for photosynthesis, plants must move.
Living beings are sensitive to touch (as well as to other stimuli) and have the ability to detect changes in their environment as a result of their environment.
They continue to develop. Living beings go through various stages of growth as they evolve and develop.
The expulsion of food from the body is the process through which digested food is removed from the body.
Non Living things
There is no life in non-living things. The lack of life is evident in their presence. Since they lack cells, they are unable to develop or demonstrate motility. They do not go through the process of metabolism, which includes anabolic and catabolic events. They are not capable of reproducing.
It is impossible for non-living things to have a life span. It is because they do not require food for energy that they do not breathe, and hence do not excrete. They are not subjected to any of the natural cycles of birth, growth, and death. External factors are responsible for their creation and destruction.
Stone, pen, book, cycle, bottle, and other non-living objects are examples of non-living things.
Characteristics Of Non Living things
- Non-living entities have no life of their own. They are devoid of cells, and there is no protoplasm, which is required for life to exist in order for it to exist.
- The absence of protoplasm results in the absence of metabolic activity.
- Accumulation is the process through which non living things “grow.” It arises as a result of the addition of elements from outside the body. Consider the case of a snowball, which can grow in size when smaller units of its own are accumulated on the outside of its outer surface.
- Non-living things do not die since they do not have cells with a defined lifespan, as do live things. The ability to live forever is a distinctive characteristic.
Ecosystem
An ecosystem is formed by the interactions of living and nonliving things in a certain area.
Non-living materials such as water, air, soil, and other elements are required by live species in order to complete their life cycle.
The natural cycling process of water, air, and soil is made possible by the presence of living creatures on the planet.
Consequently, it may be stated that both living and nonliving objects are interdependent on one another, resulting in the formation of an ecosystem.
For example, if plants do not receive enough water, they will be unable to generate food, and the process of transpiration would be prevented, which is a critical component of the water cycle.
Conclusion
In our daily lives, we come across a variety of objects that may or may not have a life of their own. With the exception of plants, all living organisms can travel from one location to another on their own. Non-living things, on the other hand, are mobile, but they require the intervention of another to move. In living species, differentiation can be observed at various phases of development, although no such differentiation can be shown in non-living substances. There are numerous things on the planet that do not move, do not run, do not eat, but are nonetheless considered to be alive organisms. Plants, for example, are not able to move around. Plants do not consume food, yet they do have a life of their own. Despite the fact that bacteria are not visible to the naked eye, they are thought to be the first type of living organism to exist on Earth. We come into contact with them on a daily basis throughout our lives. It is possible to classify the items in our environment into two categories: those that are alive and those that are not.