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Part 1: The Cell – A Castle in Disguise

You have met the many types of cells, from long nerve cells to blobby fat cells, in all their wonderful variety. But, what if I told you that all of those types of cells are actually castles in disguise. That’s right! Those tiny building blocks of life, so small you can’t even see them without a microscope, are actually made of many parts that work together, just like the magnificent castles of old.

Imagine you are a knight or a damsel, riding a horse down a country lane. You turn a corner and before you lies a rocky hill topped with a castle. Green banners flutter from the tops of the bright white towers that peak over the imposing stone walls. Those walls seem awfully forbidding, and for good reason: they are there to protect the lord and his people.

A castle’s walls are like a cell’s membrane – a thin layer that encircles the cell. Just like there are gates in the castle walls to let people in and out, a cell’s membrane allows food, water, and wastes to enter and exit the cell. Plants cells are even more like castles; along with their cell membrane, they also have a cell wall. This stiff outer coating gives plants like oak trees the strength and stability they need to reach to the sky.

You guide your horse through the gates and into the courtyard into the bailey. This courtyard tucked safely behind the walls is abuzz with activity as workers move to and fro between the stables, the blacksmith, the carpenter. Ahead of you rises the castle proper, known as the keep, where the lord lives who directs his subjects about the crops to grow and the defenses to build.

Inside the cell membrane, we find an area much like the bailey – the cytoplasm [sy-toe-plaz-um]. This is a substance rather like jelly which gently holds all the organelles (the smaller parts that make up the cell, each with their own job). One of those organelles is the nucleus, like the keep of a castle it is the “brains” of the operation. It contains the information that makes a particular creature the way that it is in the form of DNA.¹ This rather miraculous molecule is tightly coiled like a never-ending spiral staircase inside the nucleus and sends out the information to build the different parts of the creature.

Back in the castle, you are not here today to see the lord. No, today you are in search of a sword or perhaps some cheese or maybe a chair. You are looking for one of the many artisans that work here in the castle. They make all the things that the lord needs, from food and clothing to pots and pans.

Many of the organelles are involved in making things as well. Like the kitchens of a castle, the mitochondria

[my-toe-con-dree-uh] take the food that a creature eats and turns it into energy for the cell to use. This pill-shaped organelle (often pictured with a squiggle down the middle) is the powerhouse for animal cells. Plant cells have another source of energy – chloroplasts [klor-oh-plasts]; these little pill-shaped features can take the energy from the sun and turn it into sugar to power the cell.

The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) [en-doe-plaz-mic ruh-tick-you-lum] is like the artisans of the cell. Just like the cluster of shops might be tucked into one corner of the castle, the ER is maze-like structure that makes the fats and proteins for the creature.² The smooth ER specializes in fat production, while the rough ER is covered in little ribosome balls which make the proteins.

Of course, no castle or cell would be complete without some storage space. After all, where else than the root cellar are we going to store our apples until we are ready to take them to the kitchens to make apple pie? In cells, extra food and water are stored in the vacuoles until the mitochondria is ready to use it. Animals have smaller, ball-shaped vacuoles while plants have larger ones that are often shaped like kidneys. These little storage spaces, in cells or castles, help to make the whole run smoothly.

Note: More parts of the cell will be introduced in Part 2, but there are even more that we won’t meet even there. These are the most important part of the cells, but there is always more to discover in this world made by an infinite Creator.

1 Or deoxyribonucleic [dee-ox-ee-rye-boe-new-clay-ick] acid.

2 Proteins, for those who don’t know, make muscles, send messages, and do many other jobs in your body.

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Part 2: From a Castle to a Tank - Eukaryotic vs. Prokaryotic Cells

Back in the castle’s bailey some of the serfs are hard at work loading up a cart to take to the market in the next village. Some put vegetables into baskets, some carefully wrap up some bread loaves, still others stack the cheese neatly in the corner. You have retrieved your shiny new sword (or perhaps candelabra) from the forge and area ready to head out with the market wagon, but first you have to stop at the privy (you know, ye olde water closet...without the water), which often fed into the moat to be later used as fertilizer for fields.¹ Then you are on your way back to your own castle of artisans, serfs, and even privies.

Like the members of the castle, cells also need to package up the fats and proteins made in the endoplasmic reticulum into spheres² called vesicles [vess-ick-uhls]. This job is done by the delightfully named Golgi [goal-gee] body (also known as the Golgi apparatus), which looks like a series of differently sized rubber bands. The vesicles can then leave the cell like the market wagon to take the fats and proteins where they need to go. Waste management in the cell is handled by the lysosomes [lie-zoe-zomes], more spherical structures that are a bit bigger than the vesicles. They protect the cell from viruses and other invaders and recycle parts of the cell that are worn out.

So far, we have been talking about eukaryotic cells: those with a nucleus, including plants, animals, fungi, and protists. But what about prokaryotic cells that lack a nucleus, such as bacteria and archaea? Do they have all the same organelles as plant and animal cells? To illustrate how these cells are similar and different, let’s leave a defensive war machine for an offensive one – a tank.

Tanks are mobile strongholds, significantly smaller and simpler than a castle but still highly effective. As you ride along on your horse, you come upon this strange contraption with its thick armor, treads, and top hatch. You are surprised to see such a thing – like a boat made of metal crawling across the land. Suddenly, the top hatch opens, and a young man’s head appears. He invites you inside, and you see some amazing wonders – in the small space inside, there are four people looking at glowing tablets. They are working together to tell the tank which way to move using something called a “computer.”

….Okay, perhaps that was rather silly, but it illustrates the point. Prokaryotic cells have cell membranes to protect them, just like the eukaryotic cells. Prokaryotic cells are usually significantly smaller than eukaryotic cells but more mobile. Many bacteria have cilia (like little hairs) or flagella (like tails) that allow them to move around, while most plant and animal cells stay in one place because they are a part of a larger creature. Like the bailey in the castle, the tank has an open area inside; this inside area is filled with cytoplasm in both. Bacteria cells do not have a nucleus just like a tank does not have a lord; instead it has a nucleoid [new-klee-oid], DNA distributed around the cell. Like a team of soldiers working together, the bacteria’s DNA still gives instructions to the cell but in a more diffuse way. The only other organelles that prokaryotes have are ribosomes. These protein-producing powerhouses are like the computer in a tank that takes the instructions from the soldiers and then actually makes the tank move.

You might be asking yourself, why are bacteria cells missing such random things – a packing center for proteins, storage spaces, a container for its DNA? Why these things? They don’t seem to have anything in common. The thing that connects all the missing structures is that they all have membranes – wrappers around them that separate them from the cytoplasm. While bacteria do have a cell membrane to separate themselves from the rest of the world, they do not have any membrane-bound organelles (as we call this category of cell parts). Although it may seem like this is a weakness, the Creator must have known what He was doing, after all bacteria and archaea are everywhere, doing amazing things in our world.

1This practice is still done today with the use of “biosolids,” which is just a fancy name for human waste that can be used to grow food.

2You might have noticed an abundance of spheres in cells. Thinking back to fat cells, can you figure out why that might be? Spheres are excellent for storage, which is often needed in cells of all types.

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Step right up ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls to the Sensational Cell Circus! You might have met all the creatures in the Kingdoms of Creation, but you have never seen them like this. Unless you’ve been walking around with a microscope, you haven’t been seeing the cells – they’re just too small! ‘Why would I want to see something so small, so miniscule, so insignificant,’ I hear you scoff. Why, cells are the very building blocks of life. So step right up, folks, and you can see some of the best cells in all of creation.

First up, we have our tiny town tenants – some of the finest specimens known to man from the Kingdoms of Archaea and Bacteria. We’ve got long, skinny pills and short strings of pearls. We’ve got ones that look like lumpy pillows and ones that look like they’re covered with hair. But the greatest of them all is Tetanus – don’t get too close now. It looks like a worm with one giant eye, and that’s not just for show; this microscopic creature is extremely dangerous!

Next, we have our three Protist sisters – Plant-like, Animal-like, and Fungus-like. These lovely cells are all from the same “family,” but they look nothing alike. Well, of course they are all different: the Kingdom of Protists is home to all the misfit creatures, perfect for our circus! Plant-like is almond shaped and can’t move at all. Animal-like has “pseudo-arms” that reach out and then get sucked back in as she creeps forward. Fungus-like, on the other hand, is enormous with creeping fingers that help her go about the work of decomposition.

Next on our stage we have our Plants and Fungi. You’ve seen them on the hills, you’ve seen them in the valleys, and now you can see them up close and personal. Really up close – we’re talking about cells after all. Like conjoined twins, these creatures cells are stuck together, making bigger, more complex creatures. Plant’s cells are like a quilt filled with rectangles or hexagons but with rigid walls. Fungus, though, is a much more laid back creature, more round and blobby but still with stiff walls.

And now, for the main event – the parade of Animal cells. Animals are so complex that they have a whole menagerie of different types of cells. There’s the wall of rectangular skin cells; the red blood cells that look like a thumb-print cookie; the long, skinny muscle cells; and the squishy, pillowy fat cells.

Last but not least, we have one final cell for you to see on this very stage. We have scoured the Earth, looking for the longest cell, and we are pleased to have brought it here for you to see for yourself: the giraffe’s neck nerve cell. This magnificent creation is 12 m (40 ft) long, a true giant among nerve cells that might be only nanometers long (that’s 12 billion times smaller). Whether large or small, nerve cells have arms that reach out to connect them together into a great web that covers a creature’s entire body, letting it go out and explore all of creation.

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Part 2: What’s Shape Got to Do with It? – Cell Form and Function

You might be thinking to yourself, after hearing about all of those different types of cells: why would there be so many? Why wouldn’t every type of creature have the same cells? After all you can build a house or a church or a bank out of bricks. But would you want to drive a brick car or wear a brick dress? Do you think a brick water pitcher would even hold water? While you could make a chair out of bricks, perhaps foam cushions would be more comfortable. We use other materials, such as wood, clay, fabric, or glass simply because they work better for the job. In the same way, different types of cells help the creature do different things.

Many bacteria, archaea and some protists look like they have fur or a tail; those are cillia (the hair-like things) or flagella (looks kind of like a tail) to help them swim around. What if the little creature needs to move to find food? Then pseudopods (bits of the cell extending out and retracting) or creeping tendrils work well for searching for and capturing food. What if instead the creature is more plant-like? Since they make their own food, they often do not move at all on their own but instead float along as the ocean takes them.

Plants and fungi both need cells that can give them structure but don’t need to be able to move around, so their cells are both rather stiff. However, I’m sure you’ve noticed that mushrooms are much spongier than say your wooden chair – why? Towering trees need much more rigid cells in order to give them the strength to stand, whereas mushrooms are quite low to the ground and can get by with softer cells. These different types of cells are a gift from the Creator for not only the creatures but for us as well – wood makes much better tables than mushrooms.¹

Animals have many different types of cells, each with their own jobs. The rectangular skin cells act like bricks in the wall of a castle, protecting us from the outside world. Red blood cells look like thumb-print cookies – this shape allows them to absorb more oxygen to deliver to our muscles. Those muscle cells are long and thin, and just like the rubber bands they resemble, they stretch and contract as needed to move your arms and legs. Your fat cells, on the other hand, are blobby and round since this shape can store the most stuff. Nerve cells, though, are the coolest; their long tendrils allow them to reach out to one another, to make connections from one cell to the next all throughout your body, so that your brain can tell your feet what to do.

All of these various types of cells illustrates an important concept in science: the relationship between form and function. That is, the way something looks or how it is shaped affects what it does. A paper clip, for example, is made of a rigid material and has a curvy, twisted shape which allows it to hold together papers (or make lovely chain necklaces). What if it were made of jelly? Would it still be able to do its job? What about if it weren’t twisted – could it still hold the papers? In order for the paper clip to do its job, it must have the form that it usually has. Similarly, a red blood cell has been carefully crafted by the Creator into an admittedly unusual shape in order to do its job. Watch for form and function all around you – you will find it throughout all of creation (and the man-made world, too).

1Some people are actually trying to make furniture and other household goods out of fungus mycellium grown inside a frame. Because mycellium can grow very tightly packed together, they actually do make a rather admirable building material...I’m just not sure that I really want that in my house.

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Finally, we are on the last leg of our tour of the Kingdoms of Creation (who’s up for some ice cream when we’re done?). Our final group to visit is the mammals. Have you been waiting with bated breath for some cute, cuddly fluffiness? Well, look no further because every mammal has hair or fur, making them extra warm and soft. They can also help keep you warm (if you happen to be lost in a blizzard or whatever) since they are warm-blooded.

Mammals are found all over the world, from the tiniest bumblebee bat (only about as big as your thumb) to the enormous blue whale (ok, so these guys aren’t particularly fluffy, but they do have some hairs). They can be found in the ocean (hello dolphins, whales, and manatees) and the air (we’re looking at you, bats), but most of them are land-dwelling creatures like your average deer, dog, dormouse, or donkey (but not dugong – those live in the water). Many domesticated animals are mammals, such as cows and horses, as well as many of our favorite pets, like sugar gliders and hedgehogs. (You don’t have sugar gliders or hedgehogs? Only a dog and cat? Weird.)

Nearly all mammal babies are born living from their mothers instead of hatching from eggs like birds or reptiles. When they are born, most mammals are relatively well developed, such as horses that can walk within minutes and puppies that are covered with fur. Even though they might look like miniature versions of their parents, they are not really ready to venture out on their own just yet. They stay with their mother (and sometimes also their father) for a time to feed on the milk that the mother makes and to learn from their parents what it takes to be a successful adult.

Some awesome (but kinda weird) Australian animals break this mammal mold. The Land Down Under is the home to all the world’s monotremes and nearly all the marsupials. Monotremes, like the duck billed platypus, do in fact hatch from eggs. After they hatch, the puggles (is there possibly a cuter name for a baby animal?) will still stay with their mother for a time to fee on her milk just like other mammals. Marsupials do not hatch from eggs, but they are born extremely small (only about the size of a jellybean) and completely hairless. They live in their mother’s pouch for a time to nurse on her milk until they are big enough to venture into the wide world.

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Part 2: Don’t Judge a Mammal By Its Stripes - Cladistics

Within the last century, we have made great advancements in science and technology, from rockets to smart phones, and one of the most groundbreaking discoveries is the role that DNA plays in creation. DNA, as you probably remember, is the special molecule that holds the information that makes a creature what it is – why a pigeon is a pigeon and not an eagle (even if it does have delusions of grandeur). Scientists can use your DNA to tell many things about you: whether you are a boy or a girl, where your family comes from, whether you are lactose intolerant, and much more. We study all of this in the field of science known as genetics (it’s called that because it studies sections of DNA known as genes that each do a particular thing).

Our genes not only tells us who we are, but also who we are related to. This might not seem exciting to those of you who see your family all the time, but for those who have lost touch with their biological family (such as through adoption), this can be life changing. Imagine being able to meet someone who looks like you for the first time and find out where you came from. It’s a beautiful thing that science has given us.

The genes of animals can also tell us who they are related to, a field of study known as cladistics. Looking at those genes has yielded some very surprising connections in the animal world. Consider the giant panda: for years, scientists were certain that this creature was related to the much smaller red panda because of their similar love for bamboo and a small resemblance. Now, scientists have seen that the genes of giant pandas are much closer to a grizzly bear’s than a red panda’s, making them a true bear after all. Interestingly, the red panda is totally unique, being in a family all its own.

Studying the genes of animals have shown us that hyenas are actually more like cats, despite their canine ears and behavior, while foosas (a cat-like predator of Madagascar) are really more like mongooses. Seals and walruses are in the same group as wolves and weasels, but not manatees and dugongs, even though they are all marine mammals.

So, what about us? Where do we humans fit into this wonderfully varied creation? We have more than one cell, so we’re not bacteria, archaea, or protists. We have to consume food, so we’re not plants, but we can move around, so we’re not fungi. That just leaves animals. Our genes say that we are most closely related to the great apes like gorillas and chimpanzees, sharing up to 99% of our genes with them.

And yet, we are so very, very different from all other creatures. Sure chimpanzees can use simple tools (like using a stick to get ants) and gorillas can be taught sign language, but our intelligence, planning, tool use, language, and cooperation are simply on a different level. No other animal could mine materials out of the ground, turn them into wires, solder them together, invent a computer program to run on it, and then sell it to me so that I can write this for you.

When it comes down to it, our intelligence is the special gift that we have been given by our Creator. We might not have sharp teeth or speed like other animals, but we do have our minds that allow us to make saws and cars so that we actually can be stronger and faster than any other animal. Our intelligence has not only allowed us to make a world where people live longer, healthier lives, but also to know things about our Creator and to cultivate the good, the true, and the beautiful.

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We are nearing the end of our grand tour as we continue to move through the vertebrates of the Kingdom of Animals. Today we will visit with the reptiles and birds, so you can just hop on the back of an ostrich for the trip – we don’t have far to go. Reptiles and birds have some surprising similarities (although nearly all of them are hidden out of view), but most of the time they are easy to tell apart.

There is a funny little book called Flap Your Wings by P.D. Eastman where a little boy finds an alligator egg on the ground, and mistaking it for a bird’s egg, puts it into a nearby nest. The new mother and father bird work themselves to the bone to feed their growing baby, only to figure out later that he belonged in the nearby pond the whole time! This distress might have been averted if the boy (and the birds) had known the simple trick to tell a reptile’s egg from a bird’s. Bird eggs are ovoid in shape, meaning that they are tapered at one end. Alligator eggs, on the other hand, are oval in shape, with the same thickness at both ends. Turtle and snake eggs, on the other hand, are often round with a soft, leathery shell. A few reptiles are even born live from their mothers, while all birds lay eggs. Both birds and reptiles are born looking like a small (although sometimes ugly) version of its parents, unlike amphibians that change shape as they grow.

Once they are grown, reptiles and birds are even easier to tell apart. Reptiles range from slithering snakes to basking lizards to snapping crocodiles to armored tortoises Reptiles are most recognizable because of their dry skin that is covered with thick scales or horny plates. They are found in many parts of the world, from tiny geckos living on the islands of the Caribbean to the enormous saltwater crocodiles of Australia. You will find huge leatherback sea turtles 3,000 ft (1,000 m) below the sea and tiny draco lizards gliding from tree to tree in the Malaysian rainforest. In your own backyard, you might find some skinks or garter snakes if you’re lucky (or a Gila monster and rattlesnake if you are less lucky). Despite being so widespread, reptiles are almost never found in very cold regions because they, like amphibians and fish, are cold-blooded.

Birds, on the other hand, are warm-blooded, their bodies maintain the same temperature regardless of the temperature around them. This feature, along with the birds’ lovely feathers, allows them to live in even the coldest climates. You can find birds living all over the world, such as snowy owls near the North Pole, gentoo penguins in Antarctica, long tailed quetzals near the equator, and birds of all shapes and sizes in between. There are bar headed geese that can fly in the thin air over the Himalayan mountains and emperor penguins that can dive over 1,700 ft (500 m) under the ocean. You are likely quite familiar with the little chickadees and robins (or other birds) that live near your home, as well as the ones that are domesticated (tamed by humans), such as the chickens, turkeys, and geese that you might see on the farm and pets like parakeets and macaws.

Birds all have two legs (often covered with tough, scaly skin) and wings (although some cannot fly). Birds also do not have a mouth with teeth like most other land animals, but instead have a beak or bill perfectly designed for whatever type of food the Creator has given them to eat. The most striking feature of birds, however, is their unique feathers. Bird feathers come in different types for different uses – waterproof feathers to stay dry, downy feathers for warmth, contour feathers for flying, filoplumes to sense air pressures, and bristles like whiskers on some birds.

All feathers have the same parts (although some types have more or less of each part for their different uses). Imagine a beautiful blue parrot feather (or would you rather it be from an eagle?). The stiff piece running its length is called the shaft (its more technical name is the rachis), with the quill (also known as the calamus) at the end attaching the feather to the bird. Starting at the quill and moving up, we first come to the afterfeathers, sweet, fluffy wisps for insulation. Further up along both sides of the shaft is the blue vane – the feathery part – made up of individual barbs (those individual wisps along the length of the feather). This part of the feather is smooth on one side of the barb and hooked on the opposite. This design allows the feathers to stick together to improve warmth and water resistance. This amazing creation makes the birds a most remarkable member of the Kingdoms of Creation.

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Part 2: Wings Do Not a Bird Make

The grey waves wash over the rocky shores near Lyme Regis, England, as Mary Anning, clad in a warm, woolen dress and bonnet, picks her way slowly along the coast. The chilly December air sends a shiver through her bones, as she slowly, methodically looks for the skeletons of other creatures long gone. Her loyal black and white spaniel, Tray, trots at her heels, accompanying her on yet another adventure at the foot of the towering cliffs.

The winter storm the night before has washed away much of the sand, leaving behind the flat slabs and tide pools strewn with many smaller rocks and boulders. Mary knows this is the best time to look for fossils. In the decade that she has been searching for “curiosities,” as fossils were known in the early 1800s, she has made some staggering scientific discoveries, including finding some of the first specimens of Icthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus – massive marine (sea-dwelling) reptiles. She has little hope of one of these great, but rare, finds this morning, and is looking instead for the far more common shells and ammonite spirals.

Today, though, her luck strikes again as she spies a long, fragile bone, peeking out of the slab floor from under a clutter of pebbles and small rocks. She quickly bends down, brushing away the debris to reveal several more jumbled bones. Mary has seen many fossils in her time as an amateur paleontologist, but these look like none she has seen before. Leaving Tray to keep vigil over the spot (lest she never find it again on the ever-changing beaches), she hurries home to get the tools necessary to remove this large specimen. Mary Anning has found the first skeleton of a pterosaur (flying reptile) in England.

Alongside the more famous dinosaurs that roamed the land, the marine and flying reptiles once filled the sky and ocean but are now extinct (none of them are still living). Like their living relatives, dinosaurs and extinct marine reptiles had four legs (although some walked on two feet or had flippers fit for the ocean), laid eggs, and had teeth and scaly skin. Most modern reptiles are carnivores or omnivores, but most dinosaurs were herbivores to take advantage of the abundance of plants at that time.

The flying reptiles were similar to birds in that they had wings and two feet, as well as lightweight but strong bones and beak-like mouths. So why were they not birds? Flying reptiles had no feathers, but skin that stretched between the bones of their wings, allowing them to fly much like modern bats. Additionally, all of the known flying reptiles were carnivores, but many birds, of course, are herbivores or omnivores (think of the seeds that you put in the bird feeder in your backyard), living alongside fewer carnivores. Early paleontologists, many of them untrained, discovered some of these amazing creatures so that we can still know about them today through their hard work and enterprising spirits.

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Hey guys – check it out! I found all these cool creatures in the water! There’s a seahorse and starfish and a shark and whole bunch of others. I wonder what kind of creatures they are? If they all live in the water, then they’re probably all fish, right? Well, maybe not, I guess there are some things in the ocean that aren’t fish.

I know this salmon is a fish, though; I mean, I eat them all the time. And look, it has bones including a spine (making it a vertebrate), a tail, scales (like thick plates of skin that cover the body), gills (those slits on the sides of its head for breathing in the water), and several fins to help it swim. Oh, and it’s cold-blooded (its body temperature is the same as the water around it). A couple of the other creatures look the same, like that bluegill and that clown fish, so those have to be real fish, too.

This great white shark looks pretty promising – it has a tail, gills, and fins, too. That seems pretty fish-like, doesn’t it? But this guy doesn’t have any bones…weird. Its skeleton is made of cartilage (the same stuff as your nose and ears), which makes them super maneuverable in the water. And, wait, is this shark warm?! Yes, a few sharks are somewhat warm-blooded (they have some control over their body temperature), making them even more fierce predators. Even though they have some differences from the salmon, they are still fish. Same goes for that hagfish (Why does it look like a headless snake, anyway?) and that stingray; all of them have skeletons made of cartilage, but they are still fish.

Now, this seahorse over here definitely doesn’t look like a fish. Sure it has bones and gills and even a couple of tiny fins, but look at that cute little curly tail. No way that’s a fish. Oh, it is? Fish don’t have to look “fish-shaped,” I guess. So, this engineer goby and this electric eel (don’t get too close!) are fish, too, even though they both look more like snakes than your pet goldfish.

So, then the starfish is totally a fish – it’s right there in the name. They don’t look like fish, but as we just saw, that doesn’t necessarily mean much. Course they don’t have bones or tails or gills or scales or fins…..okay, so maybe they’re not fish. They must be invertebrates, along with this jellyfish, crayfish, and cuttlefish. Man, it’s a good thing some scientists are starting to call these creatures sea stars and sea jellies to keep us from getting confused!

Ok, we’re getting close to figuring all these creatures out, we just have a couple more. These tadpoles definitely looks fish-like. They have bones, gills, and a tail to help it swim through the water. They don’t have fins or scales, though...huh. Hey wait - that one has legs! Oh, right, tadpoles turn into frogs (or toads) because they’re amphibians, along with that cutie pie axolotl [ax-oh-lot-ul] with its fluffy external gills and that kind of creepy caecillian [si-sill-ian] (I mean, it looks like a cross between a snake and a worm and lives underground or in water). These guys start out like looking like a fish and living in the water and then live on land and breathe air as an adult. Their skin, being scale-free, is really cool, though, since the frog can breathe through it as an adult when they swim in water. This superpower comes at a price (they always do), and most amphibians have to keep their skin wet all the time. It’s a good thing we have the Kingdoms of Creation to keep all these amazing and diverse creatures in order.

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Part 2: The Cutthroat and the Hellbender

Every creature has a home made just for it by the Creator, both in the real world and the Kingdoms of Creation. They are perfectly made for that beach or this mountain or that rainforest, with features that allow them to find food and avoid hunters well. This balance of the right creature in the right home can be disturbed by people, however. We don’t always mean to, but sometimes we introduce a new creature or add something to the air or water, or hunt too many of an animal, and, all of a sudden, the creatures have a really difficult time coping. Suddenly there are too many hunters or not enough food or they can’t find places to live. Sometimes, creatures even go extinct, forever lost to us in this world; then the damage can never be fully repaired.

Fortunately, though, the Creator has given us humans the compassion to care about our fellow creatures and the intelligence to fix the problem. This is a story about the tenacity and ingenuity of people to help two such creatures – the Yellowstone cutthroat trout and the hellbender – to restore the balance of the Creator before it is too late.

In Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, USA, there is a lake (Yellowstone Lake, in fact). It is very large and very deep, home to many creatures, most notably the Yellowstone cutthroat trout, named for the red spots on its throat (not because it is likely to fly through the air and attack you). These medium sized fish live near the surface and go into streams to lay their eggs, making them excellent food for larger animals in the park, such as bears, otters, and eagles. In fact, this fish is a keystone species; losing them means that many other creatures are lost as well.

About 40 years ago, things took a turn for the worse for this fish, when the gigantic, voracious lake trout entered Yellowstone Lake from a nearby lake. Lake trout are native to the Great Lakes and other large lakes further north, but people really like to fish for them, so they brought them to Wyoming. Soon, the lake trout were outcompeting all the native fish species, eating their food (and them) like there was no tomorrow. People made a big mistake by introducing this invasive species, and now all the local fish species were paying for it.

Once the lake trout entered Yellowstone Lake, they ate tons of Yellowstone cutthroat trout, avoided being eaten themselves by staying at the bottom of the lake (and being, y’know, huge), and had lots and lots of babies. The native fish numbers dropped 90 percent, and with them the number of the animals that eat them. Gone were the grizzlies and the bald eagles that once were numerous on the lakeshore to find somewhere with more food. All the creatures in the lake were affected, and if people didn’t act fast, it might have been too late for the little fish.

So, they began a campaign: remove the lake trout from Yellowstone Lake and restore the balance. Fortunately, because lake trout live a long time, they also take a long time to reach adulthood. That makes them susceptible to overfishing: if you catch the lake trout before they reach the age of five, then you can collapse the population because there are none to lay eggs. So, they used nets to catch as many as they could (nearly 300,000 every year!); they used chemicals to kill the eggs; they used trackers to find where the fish were living so that they could catch even more. It has been an all-out assault on the lake trout. And it’s been working. The number of lake trout caught has been going to down in recent years and, even better, more and more of the ones caught are young. The numbers of Yellowstone cutthroat trout have been steadily on the rise as well, bringing with them more soaring eagles and diving ospreys, restoring the balance to Yellowstone Lake.

The harm that people do to creatures doesn’t always come in the form of invasive species; sometimes, it comes in the form of providing food and transportation for ourselves. That is what has happened to the hellbender (or snot otter, if you would rather). These largest of all North American amphibians live in clear, shallow, rocky streams in the eastern and central United States, including near my home in southern Indiana. They are exactly as cute and cuddly as their name implies, but that doesn’t make them any less important: they are some of the top hunters in their streams, hiding under rocks during the day and hunting among them at night.

Hellbenders, like most other amphibians, have permeable skin that allows water through so that they can breathe. This amazing feature allows these creatures to live on land or in water, but it also makes them vulnerable to chemicals and other changes in water. Chemical and acidity changes are affecting amphibians around the world, making them a good indicator species of the overall health of a particular area. Hellbenders are telling us that there is a serious problem in the streams around here.

Farming and roads are causing more dirt (or silt) and chemicals to runoff into those streams. The extra silt in the water makes it difficult to breathe, and when they are able to, they are breathing in chemicals that can make them sick. The dirt is also making it harder for the hellbenders to hunt: the dirt is filling in the around around the rocks, making it harder to hellbenders and their food to find the right places to live.

Fortunately, people are taking action once again. Seeing the needs of the hellbenders (and their fellow creatures), zoos across the country have begun a “head start” program for these delightfully ugly creatures. Thousands of them are born and raised for a couple of years in tanks, then released into their native homes when they are big enough to survive. By making sure that more of the young hellbenders make it to adulthood, we can increase their overall numbers, ensuring the balance of their homes for years to come.

The Creator has made an incredibly complex world that we are only just beginning to understand, so sometimes we make mistakes and cause problems for our fellow creatures. Using our knowledge and skills, we can help restore the balance for our fellow creatures and for generation to come.

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Now for the moment you have all been waiting for, the grand finale of the Grand Tour, the Kingdom of the Animals! Home to some of your most beloved creatures, from elephants to ants. As we fly over the kingdom (this time on bluebird), you will find it filled with ocean and lakes, forests and mountains, deserts and jungles; animals are so diverse that there is one to live in every type of environment on Earth. Each of these homes is full of fantastic sights and sounds and smells (have you seen elephant droppings?) that it is easy to see why animals are many people’s favorite part of creation. There are so many of those surprising, wonderful creatures to meet here, it’s going to take us a couple of weeks to get through, so buckle up!

The first type of animals we are going to visit are the invertebrates – those animals without backbones (spines). The vast majority of animals in all of creation lack a backbone, but you are a vertebrate (unless you happen to be a highly intelligent octopus and didn’t tell me), so you can feel your backbone by finding the ridge on the back of your neck and following the valley the runs down your back. All vertebrates share many features in common, but the invertebrates are incredibly diverse, from wispy jellyfish to armored crabs to slimy worms.

You have seen many invertebrates in your life, but some of these animals are so small, they can only be seen with a microscope. This type of invertebrate was first describe by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (lay-ven-hook), a Dutch hat maker. Time out! Are you telling me that a hat maker was an important scientist? That’s right, some of the most important early discoveries with a microscope were made by a man who wasn’t even a trained scientist. He was just a shop owner in the town of Delft, and one day he heard about these newfangled magnifying lenses that could seen things that you couldn’t see with just your eyes. He managed to make some of his own (some of the best for his time, too), and then the real work started.

He spent hours and days and weeks of his spare time looking at all manner of things to see what there was to see. He looked at rain water and melted snow and pond water. He looked at muscles and blood and insects. And he saw amazing things. He recognized that what we see every day is made of smaller things – what we now call cells. He saw blood cells, scales of butterfly wings (he thought they were feathers!), worms from sick sheep, and most amazingly that water was often home to many, many, MANY tiny living things. He carefully studied samples of water from several different sources over the course of weeks, noting his observations each time. He wasn’t a scientist, but he thought and worked like a scientist, and his insatiable curiosity about seemingly everything changed the way that we think about the world. Just like van Leeuwenhoek, you can be a scientist if you closely observe the world around you and keep asking questions.

Among the first microscopic creatures described by van Leeuwenhoek were rotifers – a nearly clear tube-like animal with a crown of feather-like “fingers” to brush food into its mouth (I’m thinking there’s some real time savings in this eating technique, do you think your mother would agree?). Microscopic creatures continue to be discovered today as we look deeply into more and more places, such as the minuscule cucumber-shaped creature which is found only in pools of water in Greenland (Limnognathia, if you care for the name); it is considered to be so different from every other kind of animal that it is in its own region (phylum) in the Kingdom. Can you imagine that, a whole huge region for just one small creature that grows no larger than the thickness of a human hair? At least it will have plenty of elbow room.

Of course, not all invertebrates are so small. Sure, there are many quite small creatures like shrimp, bumblebees, and the amazing proboscis worms that shoot out a tongue-like proboscis to kill their prey with venom. Others, though, are simply massive, like giant tube worms that are as tall as an elephant and live in the deep ocean or the lion’s mane jellyfish that is as long as three and a half school buses or the colossal squid (even bigger than the more famous giant squid) which can weigh as much as three gorillas.

By far the most common animals in the whole world are insects – busy bees, cheerful ladybugs, colorful beetles. With over 1 million species that we know of, insects make up half of all known creatures of any kind. We often think of these creatures – as well as their close relatives spiders – as bugs, nuisances that bother us when we go outside and creep us out inside. These little animals have thrived all over the world (even Antarctica!) and are amazingly important in helping our food to grow, removing dead plants, providing us with honey and silk, and being food for larger animals like frogs and anteaters.

You can always tell an insect from other animals just by looking at them. Catch a creature that you think might be an insect, and let’s take a look at it. The key features to look out for are six legs, three body parts, and an exoskeleton; if it has those, then it’s an insect. The front part of the insect is the head, which, like our head, has its eyes, mouth, and antennae (ok, we don’t have antennae...maybe that’s why there are so many more insects…) The next part is the thorax, which has the insect’s legs and wings (most, but not all, insects have two sets of wings). Finally you will find the abdomen, which has a lot going on inside with the stomach and other organs, but you will be much more interested in checking if it has a stinger; it will be on the abdomen if it has one. Now, this whole time that you have been looking at the exoskeleton (even if your little friend turns out to be a spider instead of an insect); this is the hard outer covering that protects them. Insects have no bones, so the exoskeleton also gives their bodies shape. So, is your creature an insect or something else? You can grab a field guide to figure out what type of creature you have befriended, and don’t forget to release it back into the wild.

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Part 2: What Is an Animal? Invertebrates Show Us the Way

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.

Before we set out in earnest to explore the wilds of the Kingdom of Animals, we ought to consult its atlas. This one is thick – with 31 different regions (phyla), ranging from the 1.25 million members of Arthropoda (those would be the insects, crustaceans like crabs and lobsters, arachnids like spiders and scorpions, and myriapods like centipedes and millipedes) to the singular member of Micrognathozoa (the Limnognathia that we mentioned earlier). All of the vertebrates are in just one phylum, and the other 30 phyla show the rich diversity in those that are spineless.

Most creatures are easy to classify, after all no one would mistake a trout for a tree or a blue whale for a bacteria. When we come invertebrates, however, it can become much more difficult to differentiate among the kingdoms. Consider, for example, a sponge – an immobile sea creature shaped like a vase that might wave gently in the current but otherwise just sort of sits there, looking for all of the world like a plant. And that is exactly where scientist put this creature for many years, but no longer! Our sweet little invertebrate (ok, maybe not so little – some are bigger than a human!) is now home where it belongs in the Kingdom of Animals.

But why? What makes an animal, an animal? A sponge is fairy obviously not a bacteria or archaea, after all it is multicellular (has more than one cell) in addition to being a eukaryote. (You remember what that is, right? It has a nucleus in each of its cells.) Perhaps it ought to be a protist? No dice, sponges have different types of cells in their bodies, while protists never do (in fact, protists are almost exclusively unicellular, too). Despite the green-ish appearance of some sponges, they are not autotrophic like plants. What about a fungus? Fungi are, after all, heterotrophic, multicellular, and have different types of cells, just like sponges. The difference comes in the sponge’s ability to move: a sponge can move parts of its body to control the water that brings it food, but a fungus cannot move at all. So, that is what makes an animal, an animal: they are multicellular, heterotrophic creatures that have different kinds of cells and can move around at least part of their bodies. (Whew! That’s a long list, thanks a lot sponges!)

What do animals need to survive and thrive? Well, what kinds of things do you need every day? You need food, of course, with carbohydrates, protein, fats, and vitamins and minerals. You need to drink water and get plenty of rest, as well as a safe place in which to get it. You also need exercise to keep your body strong and fresh air with oxygen to breathe.

What about other animals, do they need the same things? Does a frog need food and water? Of course – all animals need to eat food (being heterotrophs and all) and water of some kind, although many animals live in salt water so they don’t actually need to drink.

Does a dog need rest and shelter? My dog is currently sleeping by my feet, so I’m going to guess that they need rest. Dogs, like all animals, also need to have somewhere safe to go (although for some creatures it might be their own shell). Being a pet, she also need extra care and shelter compared to wild animals, which is why domesticated animals of all types are often given housing by people.

Does an otter need exercise? All animals move at least a little to get their food, and some animals even play like we do, including otters and dolphins. You won’t find a beaver doing bench presses or a tree frog on the treadmill, though, since they get any exercise that they need as they go about their lives.

Does an octopus need fresh air? Animals that live on land need fresh air to survive, but many animals live in water and have been given the ability to get the oxygen they need from out of the water itself. The Creator has given to each creature the home that it needs to care for its needs, so animals can care for themselves most admirably.

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Hop on board your bird to continue the Grand Tour (I think I’ll go with a peregrine falcon)! Today, we will be visiting the Kingdom of Plants. The smell of millions of flowers fill the air, as you fly among the trees and ferns, the grasses and bushes. The kingdom is full of green, green, and some more green, with flowers exploding in a burst of color here and there.

Why are all these plants so green? I mean, the trees have some brown bark and sometimes grass or leaves turn yellow and red, but that just emphasizes the point that all of the creatures here are mostly green. You can thank chlorophyll for that: tiny structures inside plant cells that let the plants make their own food through photosynthesis. Nearly all creatures that are green (and are not animals) have chlorophyll, including those bacteria and protists that can make their own food.

As you explore the kingdom you will see all the flowers, trees, grass, and bushes from your backyard, four-leaf clovers, and towering redwood trees from California. You will also see the prickly cacti and aloes native to the desert and the towering pines and spruce of the mountains; those are plants, too, even though they don’t have the usual leaves. If you look closely, you will see even more bizarre plants, like moss (that fuzzy green stuff that grows close to the ground or on the sides of trees and rocks), willowy seaweed and its cousin the green algae, and those fantastically funny-looking creatures known as liverworts (short little guys whose leaves really do look like flat livers).

One thing that is you might notice about most of these creatures is that most plants, whether a poppy or a poplar, have a similar shape. Imagine a daisy (as I often like to do) – can you picture it’s sunny face standing tall on a slender green stem? The stem, along with any branches, holds up the plant and provides a path for water and food to travel from leaves to roots and back again. Along the stem of the daisy, you will find the leaves, the food factory of the plant where most of the photosynthesis takes place.

If you were to pull up the daisy (you wouldn’t do that to my daisy, would you?), we would find the roots, like a tangle of spaghetti in black dirt sauce. The roots keep the plant, well, rooted; without them, the plant would wash away or blow over in the wind, but with them it can stand proudly. The roots are also how the plant drinks, getting water and vital minerals from the soil to keep our lovely daisy healthy and sunny.

When temperatures start to warm after the snowy winter, you will see a small ball start to form on the end of the new daisy stems – the bud. Once that bud opens to the glorious sunshine and soft wind and rain, you will see the pretty white and yellow flower, that bright, fragrant feature which attracts bees, butterflies, or other animals. The flower invites all of these visitors so that it can grow the next generation, which is in the form of seeds like tasty walnuts and hazelnuts, spiky gum balls and pine cones, and sticky burrs. Even corn, peas, and wheat are seeds that we eat. The Kingdom of Plants might be quiet and serene, but it is still full of growth and life.

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Part 2: Growing Tall and Staying Small - A Map of the Kingdom

Looking at the very thick atlas of the Kingdom of Plants (scientists have identified nearly 300,000 species!), we would find the regions (the divisions) split into two halves like a country at war with itself. The first (and much smaller) part, contains only little guys like the algae, mosses, and liverworts, while the second part has all the towering giants, from the pine tree to the prairie grasses. Fortunately, the Kingdom of Plants is at peace; the separation comes from the structure of the plants.

So, what’s this big difference? Well, let’s compare the oak tree in my front yard with some of the moss that grows on its side. They are both green, and they are both autotrophs that make their food through photosynthesis. But, it is pretty absurd to think that they have much in common besides that – our tree is nearly fifty feet tall while the moss is only a fraction of an inch.

How can our oak tree grow so very tall (after all, even animals don’t grow that tall)? Trees are vascular plants – they have features like tubes running from their roots through their trunk and branches, and out to the very tips of their leaves. This transportation system moves water, minerals, and food through the planet quite efficiently, allowing them to grow much taller than other creatures and live in harsher environments.

Our fragile little moss, on the other hand, is a non-vascular plant that lack this tube system. It has no way to transport water and food throughout its body, and consequently has no real stem or even roots. The leaves of this type of plant are often insanely thin (even just one cell thick!), with only little hair-like structures known as rhizoids to anchor themselves into place. How do they get water if they have no roots?! I hear you cry. Well, they mostly absorb it from the air, so our petite moss must stay where it is humid or damp and cannot venture into drier, harsher climes. The moss on my tree will also never get to have any sunny flowers (although the idea of a moss with a giant orange flower is pretty hilarious), but instead it has to reproduce with spores, which we will talk about more later.

What about plant-like protists? Aren’t they like non-vascular plants? After all, they often have similar names like green, red, and brown algae. Plants and plant-like protists are really similar (so similar, scientists are still moving creatures around between the groups), but to really see the big difference, you have to break out a microscope and look at their cells. Plants all have stiff cell walls made of cellulose (a kind of carbohydrate). Plant-like protists, on the other hand, have cell walls made of protein or silica (like sand) or something else that is completely unknown (no kidding – the yellow-green algae has cell walls made of some unknown material!).

Before we hop back on our birds to head to the next kingdom, I have to show you my favorite weird plants – the carnivorous plants. These are the bizarre creatures that both make their own energy from the sun and eat animals. Plants such as the Venus flytrap and the pitcher plant have amazed and baffled generation after generation, a living paradox. These creatures live in places where the soil lacks important minerals, so to make up for the deficit, they catch and consume animals for their minerals, but not actually for energy. So, even these amazingly bizarre creatures are still autotrophs like all of the other plants.

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Next stop on our Kingdom Grand Tour are two more rather mysterious realms. How can they not be when so many of their residents are invisible to us? When they have names like dog vomit slime mold and bleeding tooth mushrooms? When they look like plants (or maybe bacteria), and, yet, they’re not. These two mysterious realms are the Kingdom of the Protists and the Kingdom of Fungi. Fortunately, unlike the two tiny Kingdoms of Archaea and Bacteria, we can see many of these creatures if we search the woods and fields (and forgotten corners of refrigerators and pantries).

The most mystifying realm of them all is the Kingdom of the Protists. No joke: even scientists don’t really understand what is going on with these guys. Here’s how you can tell what is a protist: if something is not an animal, plant, fungus, bacteria, or archaea, then it is a protist. That’s like grouping together chocolate chip cookies, a hamburger, and iced tea because they are not Italian, Mexican, or Chinese food. Do you think those foods have much in common (besides being a pretty sweet lunch)? Not really, but if the only other option is “Other Foods,” then they would have to be grouped together. Same with the protists, its the “None of the Above” group of creation, but that just makes it all the more exciting to explore.

Flying over the Kingdom of the Protists, you would see much empty-looking soil and water, home to many thriving protists. You would also see oceans filled with towering green spires and fallen logs that are covered with disturbingly bright-colored goop.

Who would you like to visit first? Perhaps, I could interest you in the plant-like giant kelp forests that provide a home for many ocean creatures. If you are looking for something smaller, might I suggest the more animal-like amoebas, hunters of the microscopic world that can shift and transform their shape to envelope their prey. Looking for something a little bigger? Then step right on over to this deep-sea dwelling creature (a xenophyphorea, if you are brave); it has only one cell but is as large as a cereal bowl! If you are looking to stay a little more in your comfort zone, I highly recommend my favorite protist, the slime mold. These fluorescent yellow creatures seep an ooze over fallen trees and have even been known to solve mazes in their quest for food.

Once you are done exploring the epically bizarre Kingdom of the Protists, hop aboard your bird of choice and fly on over to the more familiar territory of the Kingdom of Fungi. As you fly overhead, you will see fallen logs, tree stumps, old apples, dried leaves, and all manner of dead things, each covered with gray or green fuzziness or perhaps some brightly colored mushrooms, with even more residents teeming around invisibly. What is up with all that dead stuff, you ask? You like tasty treats, don’t you? Oh, you don’t think stale bread sounds good? Fair enough, but one man’s trash is another fungi’s treasure. Fungi are one of the chief decomposers in many environments, breaking down dead creatures so that new creatures can take their place.

Now, I would bet that some of you think that fungi and mushrooms are the same thing. I can understand the confusion, after all mushrooms are the most charismatic of all fungi (the real fun guy in the group, you might say), but only about a sixth of the 75,000 known species of fungi have mushrooms.

Mushrooms come in an astonishing variety. Many mushrooms look like the typical white miniature umbrellas, but others are like shelves climbing up trees or tiny branches reaching for the sky or balls that explode in a cloud of dust when you touch them. They can be yellow, red, or orange and have evocative names like chicken of the woods or cauliflower mushrooms or lion’s mane. Many species of mushrooms are grown for us to eat, but others are extremely dangerous, so never eat a mushroom that you find – mushrooms are as beautiful and diverse as they can be dangerous.

In the Kingdom of the Fungi, there are also several types of creatures that are just one cell – yeasts, molds, and mildews. Yeasts have been our great help in the kitchen from the dawn of history, making breads light and fluffy, cheese blue and stinky, and the savory British spread Marmite...salty. Molds and mildews are decidedly less appetizing, such as when they are making fuzzy blue, red, or white colonies on our old bread or fruit.

Before we leave these two kingdoms, we must visit a creature that is neither here nor there, so to speak. It is a nomad that roams among the kingdoms: the lichen. Lichens grow on trees or rocks, looking kind of like flat leaves or short green branches or even orange dust. These creatures are made up of a fungus and a bacteria or an algae (a kind of protist) living together as one creature. The two working together are stronger than each on its own, allowing them to live in harsh environments like the Arctic or deserts. The protist or bacteria make food for the fungus, and the fungus provides water and protection. These little creatures are surely a wonder of creation.

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Part 2: These are Fun Guys: Fungi and Fungus-Like Protists

As we have been visiting the Kingdoms of the Protists and Fungi, you might not have noticed since we have been looking at bigger creatures, but these guys are not prokaryotes like the archaea and bacteria (creatures without a nucleus in their cells). Instead, they are eukaryotes (they have a nucleus in their cells which holds the DNA). Scientists even use these cell differences to split all creatures into three domains: Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryotes (including protists, fungi, plants, and animals).

You might be saying to yourself, but why do bacteria and archaea get their own groups while we’re lumped in with athlete’s foot? Well, among eukaryotes you can find some surprising similarities. Animals have melanin in their skin which gives it color, while some fungi use melanin to produce food in radioactive environments. Insects and mushrooms both use chitin (a special kind of carbohydrate) to give themselves strength and structure. Protists share so much in common with other eukaryotes that they are actually described as being either animal-like, plant-like, or fungus-like. The fungus-like ones, such as slime molds, primarily vary from true fungus because of their lack of chitin. Fungus-like protists’ cells are more similar to plants, but they are generally decomposers like fungi, making them both heterotrophs. We’ll come back to visit the animal-like and plant-like protists after we have met their respective counterparts.

We talked about the many different types of mushrooms, but what exactly is a mushroom? A mushroom is actually the fruit of the fungus, like an apple on a tree, so picking a mushroom hurts the fungus no more than picking that apple hurts the tree. The main part of the fungus is actually under the ground, in the log, on the tree, or anywhere else the mushroom happened to be growing. If you go out in the forest and turn over a log, you might see a bunch of white tendrils all criss-crossing each other. That is the main part of the fungus known as the mycellium (my-see-lee-um). Mycellia (plural of mycellium) do amazing things in the environment, including helping trees talk to each other and helping crops get nitrogen, as we will discuss more later.

The largest creature in the world is one fungus that lives in Oregon, with its mycellium covering over 2000 acres (that’s an area as big as 1500 American football fields) and likely weighing at least 10,000 tons (or as much as about 65 blue whales). Pretty much all you will ever see of it, though, are its mushrooms that appear like magic here and there throughout the forest. Scientists think that this mushroom is not only enormous but also ancient – maybe even alive when the pyramids were being built in Egypt.

What makes mushrooms grow? When the conditions are right (such as after it rains or after a forest fire), the mycellium will produce a mushroom. A typical mushroom has a tall stalk with a cap on top of it. The caps can be many different shapes, from the typical flat or conical shapes to a v-shape with a deep cleft in the middle. Under the cap, the mushroom might have gills (thin sheets like teeth on a comb), pores (little holes), ridges or teeth that hold the spores (kind of like seeds) of the fungus. As the mushroom ages, it spreads the spores so that more of the fungus can grow. Fungi can also grow by spreading out their mycellia.

1We’ll come back to the comparisons between the plant-like and animal-like protists and other creatures in later chapters.

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Welcome one and all to the Grand Tour where you will see the sights and sounds, the thrills and chills of all the kingdoms. Over the next several weeks, you will get to visit creatures from the tiny to the towering, the floral and the fierce. Once you step aboard the Grand Tour you will be whisked away to meet creatures never before seen by boys and girls, hidden in the depths of the ocean and the darkest rain forests, if you are up for the adventure…

This week we will start our tour in the two kingdoms made entirely of microorganisms (those too small to be seen with the naked eyed: the Kingdoms of Archaea (ar-kay-uh) and Bacteria. Hey you, in the back, did you say they are boring? Well, that is where you are wrong. You might not be able to see them, but they can certainly see you. And without them, you wouldn’t last a day. So, what do you say? Are in for the trip of a lifetime to see all the life that there is to see?

Before we can begin, I must acquaint you with your tools for this part of the trip: a microscope. This handy tool uses lenses like those found in eye glasses to magnify our friends so that we can see them. Amazingly, in all of human history, the microscope was only invented about 450 years ago. Imagine that you might have been a medieval scholar or a Roman soldier or a worker on the pyramids and not known a thing about this part of creation. What a privilege it is to live at a time when we can behold so many wonders of the Creator!

Hop on board our robin (or you can choose the toucan), and let’s fly over to those kingdoms. First, we leave behind the villages of the Kingdom of Animals, teeming with life; soar over the Kingdom of Plants, verdant and peaceful; and then we spy in the distance two seemingly empty kingdoms. We see the fence around these two kingdoms with some lakes (one of them does appear to be a strange rainbow color), but otherwise there appears to be nothing.

How strange, you might say to yourself, but then you remember your microscope! As you zoom in, closer and closer to one of those lakes or the soil or even the air itself, you will see millions and billions and trillions of archaea and bacteria, nearly all of which are just one cell all by itself.

The Kingdom of the Archaea is filled with extreme environments, from the saltiest lakes to one that are boiling hot. Part of the kingdom is freezing cold, while another is as dry as the most arid deserts. There are wastelands of toxic sludge and radioactive chemicals. In each of these, vast numbers of archaea are found, living cozy little lives in the homes that are just right for these extremophiles. Some archaea do live in more moderate environments, such as bogs or cow intestines or the ocean, but these archaea often do strange things like live without oxygen or eat oil or make their own food from chemicals rather than sunlight. Many new archaea are found every year because they live in such surprising places, including the most astonishing place of all – your own backyard (which is a strange place to find something that we usually see in the deepest, darkest ocean)!

Next up on our Tour, we will fly on over to the Kingdom of Bacteria, a much more notorious lot, to be sure. I bet you have gotten sick from one of these little buggers before and had to take an antibiotic. It certainly is true that many germs are bacteria, but the vast majority of bacteria are not harmful to humans. As we said earlier, many are our friends. If you like bread, cheese, or yogurt, you can thank bacteria. You have more bacteria in and on your body than you have cells in your body, and it is a good thing, too, because they help protect you from germs. Like two armies facing off, the friendly bacteria and the germs fight for control. If you want to keep your bacteria army healthy and strong, be sure to maintain a healthy diet.

Take some time with your microscopes to explore this hidden part of creation!

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Part 2: Terra Incognita and More Familiar Lands

Now that the younger students are busy with their microscopes, we can dig in a little deeper. Let’s consider this E. coli. But which kingdom does this creature belong to? It’s kinda hard to tell. Nearly all the residents of these two kingdoms, they are unicellular – made of just one cell. If we could zoom inside those cells, we would see that they are different from our own: archaea and bacteria all lack a nucleus, the part of our cells where the DNA is stored, making them prokaryotes. These two kingdoms are so similar that wee only know that E. coli belongs in the Kingdom of Bacteria because we have looked at its DNA! At the genetic level (having to do with DNA), these two kingdoms are very different, diverged by the Creator so that together they could fill every nook and cranny of our world.

Even though we know more about these two kingdoms that we used to, don’t get the idea that we know a whole lot. I mean, just check out this atlas for the Kingdom of Archaea – half of it is labeled terra incognita and covered with dragons and itty-bitty sea monsters. Makes sense though – it’s not so easy to find archaea since they live in places that are likely to kill us. We have, though, explored parts of two phyla (regions). One includes some of the most famous archaea that live in the deep ocean, often around the exceedingly hot thermal vents, whiling away the hours turning chemicals into food. The other phyla is more diverse, including archaea that live in extremely hot environments (up to 122ºC – well over the boiling point of water!), salty environments, as well as in the intestines of cows, in fresh water, and in soil.

The atlas of the Kingdom of Bacteria, on the other hand, (BANG!) is much more substantial: there are over 40,000 known species of bacteria in the world. A quarter of those might just be ones that live on people. But let me tell you, even though this puppy is quite hefty, a lot of the pages are blank, just waiting to be filled with newly discovered species. Nowadays, scientists usually organize bacteria into 30 phyla based on their DNA, but there are some more traditional ways of organizing them.

One early type of classification used gram staining in a process discovered by a Danish doctor named Hans Christian Gram. Like many scientific breakthroughs, gram staining was discovered through close observation, a lot of hard work, and a bit of luck. Dr. Gram was studying lung cells from patients with pneumonia. He put a stain called crystal violet on the tissue and, to his surprise, the bacteria in the samples seemed to soak up the stain! Even when he tried to rinse the stain away, some of the bacteria still stayed the purple color. Some of the bacteria, though, went back to their original appearance, leaving two groups. Another scientist might have done this same thing before and never realized the significance, but Dr. Gram saw that this was a way of differentiating types of bacteria into gram-positive (they keep the purple color) and gram-negative (they don’t).

Maybe you’re not to into liquids that can stain your clothes. Scientists still have you covered with autotrophic bacteria (they produce their own food) versus heterotrophic bacteria (they eat their food). Most autotrophic bacteria get their energy from the sun, so a lot of them are found on the ocean surface (incidentally, you can thank those guys for about half of the world’s oxygen). Heterotrophic bacteria are a bit more...complicated. I mean, they have to get their food from somewhere, so some of them are predators, eating other microorganisms, but a lot of them eat parts of much bigger creatures. Like, well, us. Hang on, it’s not as bad as it sounds. Those friendly bacteria, they’re symbiotic: they eat some of our food, but they also help us out. Bacteria help out all kind of creatures, like the ones like live on the roots of bean plants; the bean plants feed the bacteria and the bacteria produces ammonia, an important chemical without which the plant cannot grow. And yes, there are some that are pathogens that cause diseases like acne or stomach bugs or Lyme disease. Those are seriously a bummer, but modern medicine has given us antibiotics – courtesy of friendly bacteria that produce these chemicals in their continual wars. Some friendly bacteria actually eat us, too. Well, our dead cells, anyway. The decomposers help to rid the world of all debris, from roadkill to autumn leaves, acting as the world’s janitor to keep everything clean.

Bacteria do some pretty amazing things in our world, and we have only scratched the surface. Scientists are constantly finding new species, helping to learn more about creation and about the Creator, and maybe providing antibiotics that could help save lives in the future. But much of this Kingdom is still uncharted – adventure awaits!

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Bonus: Let’s Play - Are You Alive? Virus Edition

You might be wondering about another part of creation – viruses. I’m sure you have heard of these little buggers that cause the flu and coronavirus (among many other diseases). Viruses are extremely small parts of creation (even smaller than bacteria) that can infect any type of living thing. But are they themselves alive? As you might recall, living things all do seven things – get energy, excrete, respire (breathe), grow, reproduce, react to their environment, and move; additionally, living things have cells. Let’s consider if viruses do what creatures do.

A virus is a piece of DNA wrapped in a protein shell rather than being cells like bacteria. When they enter your body, they can move around and find the kind of cells that they are looking to infect. They enter the cell and cause the machinery in the cell to make more viruses. The viruses then go on to infect more cells until, of course, your immune system comes to the rescue (more on that later).

So, how did viruses do? They do have sensitivity and movement and they do grow and reproduce (although not on their own), but they do not get energy, excrete, or have respiration, nor are they made of cells. For these reasons, scientists generally do not think that viruses are living things, but we will see them again in the Commons of Creation.

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In the last chapter, we looked at the Kingdoms of Creation, which include creatures or things that are living. How can you tell if something is living? After all, a palm tree is very different from a panda, but both are living. Fortunately, scientists have considered all the different types of living things – from tiny bacteria to enormous blue whales – and have noticed that they all do many of the same things.

To find some of them out, let’s consider what you do every day since you, after all, are alive (no zombies out there, I hope). You wake up in the morning and take a deep breath of morning air. Breathing, or respiration, is one thing that all living things do. After you make your bed, you go down for breakfast (what would you like to have?). Eating food is how we get energy or nutrition, and all living things need to do this as well; some creatures eat like we do, and others make their own energy.

After helping to clean up from breakfast, you sit down to do your school work. You notice that the sun is in your eyes so you get up and adjust the curtains. You have found two more things common to all creatures – sensitivity to your surroundings and movement. Sensitivity means that you react to something that happens around you, like when a dog perks up her ears at a sound or a fish swims to the surface to get food. Movement is any kind of change of position, from running and jumping, to swimming and branching (even plants move – just wait to find out more!)

After a hearty lunch (and some more nutrition), you remember that you have to clean out your cat’s litter box. It might seem icky, but all living things excrete, or get rid of waste, such as the undesirable things in the litter box or what is in a baby’s diaper. Your cat had kittens a couple of weeks ago, so once your chore is done you hurry to visit them. How big they all are getting! Reproducing (having babies) and growing are the last two things that all living things do.

We can use what living things do in order to figure out if something is alive or not. Consider a hamster – is it alive? It can move and grow, it does respire (breathe) and excrete (that’s why we need to clean the cage!). It needs nutrition from food and water, is sensitive to its environment (it peeks its little head up when you open the cage door), and it can reproduce (although hopeful won’t). It can do all seven things, so a hamster is alive.

What about a river – can it do all the things that living things do? Rivers do move and they can grow over time, but they do not respire, reproduce, or excrete; they are not sensitive to their surroundings; and they do not need food. Two out of seven things? Sorry, a river is not a living thing. That does not mean, of course, that they are not important. Non-living things make up a vital portion of our world. We will see them again in a while when we visit the Commons of Creation, but for now, we will have to bid them adieu.

One other thing that all creatures have in common is that they are made of cells. Cells are the tiny building blocks that make up your body – you have somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 trillion of them (enough that if you put them end-to-end they would wrap around the Earth at least one and half times). They are very small – so small you would have to use a microscope to see them – which is good because imagine how large you would be otherwise!

Cells do all kinds of amazing things, from taking apart the food that you eat to supplying the air to your cells when you breathe to telling your leg when to kick a ball but not your brother. Different types of cells do these different jobs (and many more) in a wonderful, complex dance that keeps you happy and healthy. We will visit these different types of cells as we go further into the Kingdoms of Creation.

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Part 2: There’s a Certain Chemistry to All This Biology

If you have been learning about science very long, you might have taken offense at the idea that our bodies are made of cells. After all, you might say, everything is made out of atoms, so we must be made out of atoms, too. You are absolutely right, everything is made of atoms – extremely tiny particles (even smaller than cells) that bond together to make everything. Atoms come in quite a wide variety of elements, from hydrogen to organesson, and you can look at the periodic table of the elements to see all the different kinds. On it, you will notice that each element has a letter or two that represent it; scientists use this shorthand to talk about elements to save space. For living things, the most important elements are carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen.

Atoms bonded together in different ways form what we call compounds or molecules. Different kinds of compounds are what make the difference between salt (made of sodium and chlorine – NaCl as a chemist might say), sugar (made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen – C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁), and a puppy (made of...well, a lot of different elements, even gold!).

Living things are mostly made of a certain type of compounds known as organic compounds, mostly carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). We also need vitamins, minerals, and water in order to stay healthy.

Wait! I bet you’ve heard of most of those things things before. If you look at almost any food packaging, you will find them listed on the back (go ahead and look, I’ll wait). These different types of compounds are listed there because we get them from food, and in order to stay fit it is important that we get them in the right amounts.

So what do all of those fancy words mean? Carbohydrates are a type of compound that is made of carbon (C) and water (H₂O – hydrogen and oxygen). Carbohydrates are great for short-term energy storage (in sugars and starches) and providing structure (in cellulose that allows plants to grow tall). The basic building block of carbohydrates is known as glucose (C₆H₁₂O₆); glucose molecules link up with one another to form chains of molecules. The longer the chain, the more complex the compound is and the longer it takes to digest. So, if it’s going to be a while before you can eat again, reach for the complex carbs in the oatmeal rather than the simple carbs in the doughnut.

Proteins are perhaps the most diverse group of organic molecules. They are made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and occasionally sulfur. They provide structure (such as the cartilage in your ears), allow movement (through muscles), facilitate communication (with insulin in your blood), and many other things. The basic building block of proteins are called amino acids. When these amino acids are built into chains of proteins inside a cell, an absolutely amazing thing happens: what starts out as a squiggly string, folds and forms itself into an almost inconceivably complex shape. Even a small mistake in the folding will make the protein ineffective and even dangerous. This protein folding is so complex that scientists often cannot predict how a protein will fold, yet they automatically do it every day inside the cells of every creature on Earth.

Fats, or more precisely lipids, are made of carbon, hydrogen, and sometimes oxygen. Fats are often shunned in diets because of their amazing long-term fat storage ability, but it is important that we have a healthy amount of fat in our diets. Lipids often form cell membranes (the “wall” around a cell), and many hormones in our bodies are also made of lipids, including cortisol and estrogen, sending messages around the body. Fats are also important in helping us to get some of the vitamins that we need, since some can only be found there.

On the food package, you will also find a whole list of vitamins and minerals. These are both things that our bodies need that we can’t produce ourselves, everything from calcium to Vitamin E. Minerals are not organic compounds, and are often just single elements (magnesium, iron); vitamins, on the other hand, are organic compounds. Both are necessary in the right amounts to stay healthy.

Now, we come to the molecule that is not on the food package – DNA. It is arguably the most important type of molecule because it is the one that makes us….us. It encodes instructions that our cells read to carry out their jobs. DNA is made of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorous, but these simple elements combine to form the spiral staircase of life. In its twisting ladder, each strand of DNA holds the instructions for a particular creature, and everyone’s sequence is different (unless you happen to be an identical twin). Nearly every cell in your body has a strand of DNA about 6 feet (2 meters) long, but it is twisted up very tightly so that it is only about 6 microns long – that’s 10 times smaller than the thickness of a hair!

We cannot leave our little chemistry excursion without talking about one last molecule: water, that cool stuff to splash in at the lake or to take a bath in or to put in your soup. This substance may seem ordinary, but it is in many ways the elixir of life. Nearly everything in your body happens in water; in fact, even though water is not an organic compound, you are more than half water! Water is so important that it is absolutely essential for life as we know it (which is why scientists are always looking for water on Mars and other planets).

It is deceptively simple – just one oxygen and two hydrogens, but because of how molecules take their shape, it happens to be slightly positive on one side and negative on the other (think – the opposite ends of magnet), a property known as polarity. This means that adjacent water molecules are slightly attracted to each other (again, like two magnets). Polarity is responsible for making water flow, allowing it to creep up flower stems, giving it surface tension, keeping the bottoms of lakes from freezing, and other things that are critical to our world as we know it. Polarity also makes many things dissolve in water, giving us minerals in our water for our health and salt water in our oceans. Without water and its very special property of property of polarity, nothing that we know of would be alive on Earth – it is truly a miraculous molecule.

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Everything that you can see in this world is a part of creation – that wonderful, terrible, awe-inspiring everything that you can see and hear and smell. There is also a good bit of creation that it is impossible to detect with your senses, a part of an invisible unseen realm of the soul; this is a wonderful part of our universe, but not something that we will talk about here because those things are not science. Science can tell us many wonderful and important things about what we can see or hear or smell or touch in some way, so that is what we will talk about here. Those other things will have to be left for philosophy or religion or perhaps a good book.

The most amazing thing about all that we can sense the world is that they are all orderly. Everything from the rocks and trees to the stars and seas can be organized and understood. How can this be when there are so many different kinds of things in the world? It is so because creation has a Creator – the One who made all of those things. Because the Creator is orderly, He made creation to be orderly as well; because creation is orderly, we can understand how the world works. We, too, are a part of creation – a special creature made by the Creator known as a human.

We are mostly going to talk here about the part of creation that is alive. That is what biology is about – the study of life. What does it mean for something to be alive? That can be a hard question to answer, but we will consider it in the next chapter. For now, all we need to know is that things that are alive are known as creatures.

Before we go any further, I want to introduce you to a fantastical world – the Kingdoms of Creation. Imagine, if you will, a world where there are six kingdoms that live side by side with each other. Each kingdom has creatures of a similar kind: some seem to have almost nothing in them, except maybe some green scum (the Kingdoms of Bacteria, Archaea [ar-kay-uh], and Protists), others are filled with silent citizens (the Kingdoms of Fungi and Plants), while just one is a raucous riot of movement (the Kingdom of Animals).

We are going to look at each of these remarkable kingdoms in turn shortly, but for now, I just want you to get the lay of the land, so to speak. To learn our way around, we will start in the most familiar section, the Kingdom of the Animals. I’m sure you know many animals: fish and bugs and snakes and robins and dogs and guinea pigs and many, many others. How many can you name?

Let’s imagine for a moment that we are on one of those robins (or would you rather be on a toucan?) flying over the Kingdom of the Animals. As you are flying, you would see far below you, a great fence encircling the kingdom because all the animals want others to know that this is their home. All around is beautiful country, with lakes and rocks and green hills, for the animals live in many different types of homes.

Dotted through this land are villages, where similar animals live near one other, with each particular type of animal in its own house. Some of these villages are large, with many houses and particular animals, and some are small. There are even some houses which are all by themselves, but I don’t think that they are lonely since they can go and see the other parts of creation as much as they want.

These villages have the lovely name of families of creatures since all of the animals are closely related. Each particular animal type is what we call a species – dogs are a species. What are we to make of the many different types of dogs, such as the Beagle and the German Shepherd? These are what we call breeds or varieties of the same species. You can think of them as living in different rooms of the same house. I imagine that dogs and cats must have huge mansions to have enough room for all their different breeds! Each kingdom has these villages where similar plants, fungi, or bacteria can live together. Let’s go explore the wonders of creation!

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Part 2: What’s in a Name? A Map of the Kingdom

Now that we have gotten to the Kingdoms of Creation, I am itching to visit an animal. What animal would you like to go visit? I think we’ll go to see the lions. To find our way to their house, we will, of course, need to look in an atlas. The one for each of the kingdoms looks like there are maps of different states separated into regions, and fortunately there is a handy index in the back to help you find each creature.

The lions’ address is P. leo, which might seem like a strange address, but it will help us locate the them just fine. How could you possibly find in all of creation with a name as simple as that? All species have this type of name, using a system known as a binomial nomenclature. Each name is made up of two parts (“bi” means two) – the genus (the street that the animal lives on) and the species. The genus is indicated with just the first letter, which is capitalized, and then the whole species name, which is not capitalized. This system was created by a Swedish scientist named Carolus Linnaeus, who you ought to read more about some time.

In the index under P. leo is this entry:

P. leo

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Carnivora

Family: Felidae

Genus: Panthera

Whoa, those are some weird words – did your mother have trouble pronouncing those? The names seem strange because words in binomial nomenclature are often based off of Latin or Greek words so that scientists from all over the world can communicate more easily.

What is up all these different groups that the lion is in – phylum, class, order? The phylum is the region where you will find the lions (in plants and fungi, the regions are known as divisions). The class is the state, and the order is the county (like a region in the state). You already know that family is the town where the animal lives, and genus tells us the street. Now, we can go visit the lions – hope they don’t eat us!

Perhaps we should go visit the dogs, instead. Seems safer, don’t you think? The dogs’ address is C. l. familiaris – wait, what? Aren’t there supposed to be two parts to the name? Yes, there normally are, but dogs are a part of a subspecies (a part of a group of animals that could reproduce together but usually don’t, often because they live in different parts of the world). Subspecies use a trinomial nomenclature, with the subspecies name added on the end. The full name written out is Canis lupus familiaris. Canis lupus (or C. lupus) is the wolf, the sister species to the dog. If you would look C. lupus up in the index and find that they are in the same county as the lions - the order Carnivora. They just live a few towns over in the family Canidae on the street Canis. You can think of the subspecies of dogs and wolves as living in two different houses on a large farm together – make sure you get the right one or you might end up on the menu!

In our world, as opposed to the Kingdoms of Creation, taxonomy, or the classification of creatures, is just a way that scientists organize animals to better understand them. The lions, of course, live right with the termites and the grasses on the savanna rather than in their own towns. Studying taxonomy helps scientists see the relationships between creatures so they can study their similarities and differences more easily. Organizing creation helps us to understand the organized Creator better.

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