Life Processes Important Questions

Life Processes are the kinds of actions which are essential for plants and animals for survival. The basic required activities which are performed by an organism to show it's living condition are called life processes. The processes are performed to maintain the energy and prevent the damages and breakdown of a cell. Living beings are made of cells and cells form tissue and tissues form organs. A certain organ system is necessary to maintain a certain kind of life process. There are six basic kinds of life processes which make organs active even when an organism takes rest. These are nutrition, transportation, metabolism, respiration, reproduction and excretion. 

The plants and animals have some common life processes but some are different in them such as - animals can not prepare their own food in their body but plants are capable of this. Likewise plants are not capable to move from one place to another that animals can do. But, some kinds of life processes such as - nutrition, respiration, food storage, reproduction, excretion, response to stimulus are common in them in different methods. 

Here are some different methods of common life processes between plants and animals. These are tabulated below - 

Explanation

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Life Science is a kind of subject that gives the students an opportunity to know about the mystery of the existence of living beings. Life processes are mandatory for the survival of a living being. There are basically six types of life processes with some additional life processes which show the sign of life in a living being. Here mainly six basic kinds of life processes are being explained thoroughly.

Nutrition - There are different kinds of nutritions for plants and animals. In the case of plants, it is called autotrophic nutrition. Green plants can prepare their own foods by the process of photosynthesis. For this, plants need carbon dioxide, water, presence of sunlight and chlorophyll. Chlorophyll converts light energy to chemical energy and water molecules split into hydrogen and oxygen and from carbon dioxide, carbohydrates are reduced. There are tiny pores on the surface of green leaves which are called stomata. Carbon dioxide gas enters through it. This stomata is surrounded by a pair of guard cells. These guard cells operate the opening and closing of stomata. The raw materials such as - water, nitrogen, phosphorus which are used in photosynthesis method, are taken by the plants from different sources. 

 Heterotrophic nutrition is seen in animals and it is divided into three types. Carnivores, Herbivores and Omnivores. Carnivores(lion, snake etc) only eat animals and herbivores(rabbit, elephant, goat etc) only eat plants. Omnivores(man, dog etc) eat both animals and plants. There are some organisms(human, cat etc) which break food inside their body before absorbing it and some organisms(ticks, leeches etc) derive their food from other organism's bodies without killing them. In unicellular organisms(amoeba, paramecium etc) food is taken by the entire surface of the living being. Human beings take nutrition through the body parts like mouth, stomach, intestine etc. 

Respiration - There are two types of respiration like - aerobic respiration and anaerobic respiration. In this system the glucose is broken with the presence of oxygen and produce energy, carbon dioxide and water. Sometimes, the process takes place in the absence of oxygen. Then it is called anaerobic respiration. It mainly produces ethanol and lactic acid in the form of energy. 

Transportation -  Transportation is the movement of any substance from one place to another. Water is the main carrier for the plants' body and blood and blood vessels play an important role in animals' transportation. There is a pumping organ to push blood around the body of animals. There are two blood vessels which carry blood to every cell of the organ. These are arteries and veins. 

Metabolism - It is a chemical process in which different types of chemicals are involved in controlling the living state of a cell in a living being. All living organisms need energy for producing new organic substances. These processes are divided into two methods. Catabolism in which the larger organic molecules break into smaller molecules and release energy. On the other hand, there is Anabolism in which cells gain and store energy from simpler substances. 

Reproduction - All the living organisms maintain reproduction for the continuity of their species generation after generation. There are two kinds of reproduction seen in plants and animals. In sexual reproduction a newly formed individual is made which is different from its parents in both genetically and physically. In plants, this sexual reproduction happens through pollination. In asexual reproduction the entities prefer to reproduce asexually by different means such as - budding, vegetative propagation, fragmentation, spore formation and binary fission. In animals, asexual reproduction happens through gemmules, regeneration, parthenogenesis etc.

Excretion - It is the elimination of toxic waste substances from the body. It basically differs with different types of living species. Plants remove oxygen through the stomata. Excess water of plants is removed by transpiration. Dead cells , gums, resins etc are the waste products that the plants remove from their body. Vertebrates have well developed excretory systems. Kidney has a structural unit called nephron where blood is filtered. Then the pure blood spreads all over the body and the waste products are passed through the ureter and urinary bladder collects the urine that is excreted through urethra.