What is Biology?
You may have learnt to classify a rose or
a human as ‘living’, rock and water as
‘non- living’. But
why is this so? If you say that ‘living’
is something that moves but then flowing water
can be called
living, right? That’s not entirely true.
Life has a set of properties that an organism
has to follow to be
called ‘living’. And a wonderful discipline
of science studies life in great detail it.
It is called biology.
The word bio means living and logy means study.
So biology means the study of living things.
Simply
put, anything which interacts with its environment,
use energy and reproduce are known as living
things for example we humans eat food to get
energy, feel and respond to our environment
and
reproduce to make more of ourselves. Many
other living things like insects, birds, and
animals have
the same properties like us so they are all
living organisms. Now the question arises
how many types
of living things are there? And how they are
different from us? Biology is a field which
answers these
questions and many more questions related
to living things.
What is Biology?
There are seven characteristics that a living
thing follows and therefore we study this
in the vast field
of biology. These are:
1. Order: If you examine a rose from near,
you will notice it is very ordered; the petals
are
whorled around each other with the centre
bearing seeds. This illustrates the highly
ordered
structure that typifies life. Living cells
are the basis of this complex organization.
2. Reproduction: Organisms reproduce their
own kind. A mother giant panda will always
give
birth to a panda not a horse (we learnt that
from Kang Fu Panda too).
3. Growth and development: Inherited information
in the form of DNA controls the pattern of
growth and development of all organisms. You
most probably look like your parents or a
close relative, thanks to the genes.
4. Energy processing: As mentioned in earlier
video, we humans eat food to get energy. The
food we eat has also eaten some food to utilize
its chemical energy stored in order to power
its own activities and chemical reactions.
5. Response to the environment. All organisms
respond to environmental stimuli. This is
why
you laugh when you are tickled.
6. Regulation. Many types of mechanisms regulate
an organism’s internal environment, keeping
it within limits that sustain life. This is
also called homeostasis. A lemur sunbathes
to help
raise the animal’s body temperature on cold
mornings.
7. Evolutionary adaptation.  Lions use camouflage
to blend in with the savannah so they can
easily hunt down an animal. Such adaptations
evolve over many generations.
Some new concept like ‘genes’ and ‘DNA’
are introduced in this video these will be
explained in our upcoming videos. Stay tuned!
