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LIVING or NON-LIVING or DEAD??

  • For each slide, identify whether the object is living, dead or non –living.
  • How do you know?

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Exit Slip: Is COVID-19 a living organism? Why or why not?

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Discuss: What are the characteristics of a living organism?

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All living things:

  • Are made of cells
  • Need energy
  • Grow and develop
  • Respond to the environment
  • Reproduce
  • Have adaptations for their environment

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Something to think about:

An individual living organism might not show all of those characteristics in a given moment so when we are considering if something is living or not we look at the species or several examples of that organism

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But the whole “alive” vs “not alive” debate isn’t always as clear cut.

ex. Mules are sterile (cannot reproduce) but you’d probably consider them “alive”

A better definition of alive might consider that living things take self-generated actions to sustain life.

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So, back to our question about viruses: It depends on your definition of “alive”

Not alive: cannot reproduce on their own (need a host cell).

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Alive: can reproduce with “help” from a host cell.