Cells as the Building Blocks of Life - Essay Example

Therefore over time, animals evolve physical attributes to catch and devour their prey and avoid being the prey of larger animals and automatic behaviour patterns. In this case, the lions use their similar colour to hide in the tall grass. They know they can't conquer the large adult buffalo, so they go after the smaller baby, who tries unsuccessfully to escape into the river. Two crocodiles seeing a prey of opportunity, try to pull the baby into the river but lose out in a tug of war to the more numerous lions.

Just as the lions are about to finish off the baby, the adults return and, with their superior size and horns, can rescue the still-alive baby and fend off the lions. This event shows that while the lions instinctively only successfully attack the baby buffalo, they did not have the foresight to realize the adult buffalo would return to try to rescue their young. Life in the wild for animals is a constant struggle to prey on more vulnerability for food and to avoid being preyed upon themselves. While they evolve physical characteristics and instinctive behaviour to enhance their survivability over time, they generally do not develop the intellectual capacity to refrain from a tempting target that could spark an effective counterattack. Man can evolve to the top of the food chain despite potentially more powerful adversaries.

Cells are the building blocks of life. As the Cells Alive website states, they divide naturally in newborns, producing new cells with little changes. Hence, their host animal species are better equipped to survive in their particular environment. These adaptive mitosis changes occur slowly over hundreds if not thousands of years. A baby is a combination of the mother’s and father’s genes or cell structures, and there are likely minor changes that neither parent has. While most cells have specialized facilities and functions such as skin, bones, heart, liver, etc., some cells called stem cells can be thought of as a joker in a pack of playing cards. In other words, current medical research shows that they can be converted into cells with specialized functions as required. This creates exciting possibilities for replacing damaged vital organs such as the heart, liver, and skin, which have suffered severe burns in a fire or by scalding, etc. However, research in this area must be carefully controlled to ensure that socially undesirable species are not created.