Anthony Nicoletti, Jr., age 11, of St. Lo,Mo„,for his question:
What is an amoeba?
We share this roomy world of ours with a host of little living things too small for our eyes to see. Molds and yeast spores float in the air, bitsy bacteria ride on every speck of dust, A drop of pond water teems with a vast variety of individual plants and animals. Chances are, we shall find at least one amoeba among them, for this humble member of the animal kingdom is a water dweller.
The bodies of sizable animals are made of countless small cells, each fitted for special duties. All living cells are filled with a clear jelly called protoplasm, The little amoeba has no special cells for seeing, eating and digestion as do we, For the tiny creature is a single‑celled animal and his one cell is able to do everything necessary to keep him alive, In some respects, he manages to keep alive better than we do, For, barring accidents, the one‑celled amoeba is immortal.
It takes about 2,000 average sized amoebas to measure one inch. Some varieties are much larger, just big enough to be seen as tiny dots. The only way to study the body of an amoeba is under a microscope. T o be seen this way, his small body will be stained with various dyes and mounted on a glass slide. At first glance, you might mistake him for an ink blot,
This is because there is no definite shape to his soft little body. In real life, it flows along this way and that in a never‑ending search for food, The little fellow has no nose, no eyes, no ears, yet somehow he seems to sense the most promising direction in which to go. He pokes out a feeler called a pseudopod, meaning a false foot, and the rest of his jelly‑like body flows following along.
When he reaches a bacterium, the amoeba engulfs it with several pseudopods.
The tiny morsel becomes a food vacuole, a temporary stomach where it is digested, When all the goodness has been removed, the food vacuole is passed outside the amoeba's body and left behind.
The microscope slide may show the amoeba in color, though in real life he is actually a colorless blob of protoplasm. The outer edge of the cell is encased in firmer jelly, though this is too fragile to be called a skin. The protoplasm jelly is spattered with tiny granules and several larger objects, There may be two or three food vacuoles and there is sure to be a cell nucleus which governs the life processes within the amoeba,
When food is plentiful and living conditions are good, the amoeba multiplies, the nucleusdivides into two equal parts. Each goes its, separate way, taking half the living protoplasm with it„ The amoeba simply becomes a pair of twins, leaving no parents behind to grow old and die, This method of multiplying is called cell division. The amoeba may meet with accident, but he never grows old or dies from old age.