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nicely in one of the other
kingdoms.
Broadly, protists can be classified
as animal-like, plant-like, or
fungus-like. It is important to
remember that being “animal-like”
does not make a protist an animal.
Such and organism, like plant-like
or fungus-like protists, are
members of an entirely different Figure 15 – Kelp can grow to over 100
group of living things. meters.
You can see that kelp looks like a
plant. In fact, it conducts
Do Protists Have Anything photosynthesis and has many cells
in Common? like a plant too. So, why don’t we
just call it a plant? One major
Protists are so different, it reason is that the cells of kelp are
sometimes seems like they have not specialized. Unlike plants or
nothing common. That’s not true. animals, where different cells have
For example, all protists are different jobs (think about a brain
eukaryotic, meaning their cell or cell versus a blood cell versus a
cells have nuclei. liver cell,) the cells of kelp do not
specialize and form tissue. This is
Also, they prefer to live in aquatic another thing that is true of all
environments. Many protists are protists. If they are multi-cellular,
parasites. Finally, most (although the cells are not specialized.
not all) protists are unicellular,
meaning they are made of a single Animal-Like Protists
cell. One common protist that is
not unicellular is kelp. In fact, kelp Animal-like protists are called
can be over 100 meters long protozoa. Like animals, protozoa
(longer than a football field.) can move on their own and are
heterotrophic. Some protozoa eat
by wrapping their bodies around
their prey, creating a “food storage
compartment.” Toxins are then
produced which paralyze the prey,
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