Characteristics Of Living And Non Living Things

Table of Contents

 Introduction
 Living things
 Non-living things
 Difference between living and non-living things
 Criteria for differentiating living things from non-living things

Introduction
We can find many things around us, from mountains and oceans to plants and animals. The earth
in which we live is made up of several things.  These “things” can be categorized into two
different types – Living and Non-living Things.

 All living things breathe, eat, grow, move, reproduce and have senses.
 Non-living things do not eat, grow, breathe, move and reproduce. They do not have
senses.
Living things have “life,” though some might not show its evident signs. For instance, a tree
would probably not react the same way a human would. It would not react when we hit it, and it
might not be able to walk around. Though the signs of life displayed by them are not very
observable, it does not make them non-living.
Let us have a detailed look at the important characteristics of living and non-living things and the
difference between the two.

Living things
Living things exist and are alive and are made of microscopic structures called cells. They grow
and exhibit movement or locomotion. They experience metabolism, which includes anabolic and
catabolic reactions.
Living things are capable of producing a new life which is of their own kind through the process
of reproduction. Living things have a particular life span and are not immortal.
Cellular Respiration enables living organisms to acquire energy which is used by cells to
perform their functions. They digest food for energy and also excrete waste from the body. Their
life cycle can be summarised as follows – birth, growth, reproduction and death.
Examples of living things are animals, birds, insects, and human beings.
Also Read: Living things

Characteristics of Living Things

 Characteristics of Living Things
Following are the important characteristics of living things:

1. Living things exhibit locomotory motion, they move. Animals are able to move as they
possess specialized locomotory organs, for example – Earthworms move through the soil
surface through longitudinal and circular muscles.  Plants move in order to catch sunlight
for photosynthesis
2. Living things respire. Respiration is a chemical reaction, which occurs inside cells to
release energy from the food. Transport of gases takes place. The food that is ingested
through the process of digestion is broken down to release energy that is utilized by the
body to produce water and carbon dioxide as by-products.
3. Living things are sensitive to touch (and other stimuli as well) and have the capability to
sense changes in their environment.
4. They grow. Living things mature and grow through different stages of development.
5. One of the striking features is that living things are capable of producing offspring of
their own kind through the process of reproduction, wherein genetic information is
passed from the parents to the offspring.
6. They acquire and fulfil their nutritional requirements to survive through the process of
nutrition and digestion, which involves engulfing and digesting the food. Some living
 organisms are also autotrophic, which means they can harness the sun’s energy to make
their food (also known as autotrophs).
7. The digested food is eliminated from the body through the process of excretion.

Also Read: Characteristics Of Organisms

Non-living things
Non-living things are not alive. They do not possess life. They do not have cells and do not grow
or show locomotion/movement. They do not undergo metabolism with anabolic and catabolic
reactions. They do not reproduce.
Non-living things do not have a life span. They do not respire as they do not require food for
energy and hence do not excrete. They do not fall into any cycle of birth, growth or death. They
are created and destroyed by external forces.
Examples of non-living things include stones, pens, books, cycles, bottles, etc.

Characteristics Of Non-living Things

The important characteristics of non-living things are mentioned below:

1. Non-living things are lifeless. They do not have cells, and there is no protoplasm which
forms the basis for life to exist.
2. Lack of protoplasm leads means no metabolic activities.
3. They do not have a definite and certain size of their own. They take the shape of the
substance they are contained in, for example, a liquid takes the shape of its container.
Stones, rocks and boulders are moulded by the changing environment and landscape. The
change in the state of a non-living thing is due to an external influence.
4. Non-living things “grow” by accretion. It occurs through adding materials externally. For
example, A snowball may increase in size due to the accumulation of smaller units of its
own on its outer surface.
5. Non-living things never die as they do not have cells with a definite lifespan. Immortality
is a distinguishing factor.
6. Fundamental life processes such as reproduction, nutrition, excretion, etc. are absent in
non-living things.

Difference between living and non-living things

Here are some of the major differences between living and non-living things:

Living Things Non-Living Things

They possess life. They do not possess life.

Living things are capable of giving birth

Non-living things do not reproduce.
to their young ones.
 For survival, living things depend on Non-living things have no such
water, air and food. requirements

Living things are sensitive and responsive Non-living things are not sensitive and do
to stimuli. not respond to stimuli.

Metabolic reactions constantly occur in There are no metabolic reactions in Non-

all living things. living things.

Living organisms undergo growth and

Non-living things do not grow or develop.
development.

They have a lifespan and are not

They have no lifespan and are immortal.
immortal.

Living things move from one place to Non-living things cannot move by
another. themselves.

They respire and the exchange of gases

Non-living things do not respire.
takes place in their cells.

Example: Humans, animals, plants,

Example: Rock, pen, buildings, gadgets.
insects.

Criteria for differentiating living things from non-living things

For easy differentiation between living things and non-living things, scientists have come up
with traits or characteristics that are unique to them.
The criterion for classification is necessary to avoid the wrong grouping. Hence, science
developed a basis for classification. Anything that has life is considered a living being.
For example– humans, trees, dogs, etc.
Things which have no life in them are considered non-living.
For example– stone, mountain, watch, etc.
Scientists have discovered a few criteria for differentiating living things from non-living things.
Here are some of them:

1. Living beings can grow and develop.

2. Living beings obtain and use energy.
3. Living beings adapt to their environment.
4. All living beings are made of one or more cells.
5. Living beings respond to their environment or stimuli.
6. All living things excrete to remove waste material from the body.
 7. Living beings have the ability to give birth to their young ones through the process of
reproduction.
8. All living beings require energy to perform different metabolic activities, and they gain
energy from food/ nutrition.
9. All living beings, apart from plants, move from one place to another. This type of
movement is called locomotion.

If something obeys a few of the rules, it cannot be categorized as a living thing. It has to follow
all the given rules stringently. For example, an icicle, although it grows (increases its mass or
length), is still a non-living thing since it cannot reproduce or respond to stimuli.
Non-living things do not have any of the life processes, unlike living beings.

Classification of Animals & Plants

Taxonomy is the study of how organisms are categorized based on shared
characteristics. You have seen examples of phylogenetic
trees and cladograms (branching diagrams based on cladistic analysis) in
the lectures. These methods trace evolutionary differences or changes based
on primitive (shared) and derived (new or different) characteristics. The
different branches of a phylogenetic tree or a cladogram are given formal
grouping names. The dominant system in use today was originally proposed
by Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) and is known as the Linnaean classification
system. The system classifies organisms into groups from kingdom (largest)
to species (smallest) as follows:

Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species

Sometimes, further divisions are needed and a sub-category may be added

such as a sub-class, or sub-order.

The following is an example of the Linnaean classification for a common

vertebrate, pet dog (Canus familiaris):
Kingdom   Animalia

    Phylum   Chordata

        Class   Mammalia

            Order   Carnivora

                Family   Canidae

                    Genus   Canis                            

                        Species   familiaris
Note: in the Linnean classification system, genus and species names are
italicized. The genus name is written with a capital letter, but the species
name is not.

Each classification level is based upon a set of shared characteristics that are
common to all members of that level. Kingdoms are the broadest categories in
the Linnaean system. For example, your pet dog is in Kingdom Animalia
(multicellular and heterotrophic which means they eat other organic materials
to survive, Table 6.1).

A dog has a spinal cord of nerves along its back and particularly a solid
vertebral column (chordate) made of bone (Phylum Chordata). It is a mammal
(Class Mammalia – warm blooded, 3 middle ear bones, hair, provide milk to
their young via mammary glands) and dogs descended from meat eaters
(Order Carnivora – not all members of this Order are carnivores but they are
descended from them).

Having five toes on the front feet, four toes on the back feet and claws that do
not retract (unlike cats) makes them part of Family Canidae. At the level of
family, genus and species, it is often quite subtle things that separate one
organism from another. We could all likely use some visible features and
common sense to figure out a way to separate lions and wolves, but
separating a coyote and wolf takes more care and knowledge and will come
down to things like the size of different bones and specific shape attributes.

You just have to look at a group of people and it becomes apparent that within
a species there can be considerable variation in outward body appearance,
and so decisions must be made that separate between-species variations
from within-species variations.

The final division—species—categorizes plants or animals of similar habit,

morphology and function that may interbreed and produce fertile offspring. In
the fossil record, it is impossible to tell if two particular individual organisms
could interbreed and so the practical definition for paleontology is that of
similar habit, morphology and function. The number of species that have
come into existence and which no longer exists far outweighs the number of
species currently living.

Cli
ck here to view this table as a PDF file.

 
Want to Know More About Variations in Classification Systems?

Linneaus worked from the gross morphology of organisms at a time when

there were limited tools to examine single celled organisms. He could
separate plants and animals by whether they could make their own energy via
photosynthesis, or needed to eat other organics for energy. However, he had
little information on organisms the size of bacteria.

Today we have access to sophisticated tools to analyze organic compounds

in small quantities. This kind of analysis have been able to tell us that a
particular organism forms specific proteins and is therefore more likely closely
related to other organisms that form the same proteins. Most recently, modern
molecular genetics and the ability to directly examine DNA has allowed even
closer examination of the smallest living members of our planet, and debates
over classifications and ancestry are once again healthy and active. In fact,
the 5th, 6th and 7th editions of the textbook discuss different classification
systems based on these recent discoveries and debates. The 6th edition
introduces three domains: the prokaryotic Archea (the simplest, earliest forms
of what we would commonly term small b “bacteria”); the prokaryotic Bacteria
(capital B indicating a formal classification name); and the Eukaryotes.

What does this mean for you? If you do a search on line for more information
to help you study, you will find that there are several different methods of
organizing life into kingdoms or even methods that include classification levels
above kingdoms.

In this course, we will stick to the five-kingdom system as shown in Table 9.1
of the 8th edition of the textbook.

Using the Fossil Classification Flowchart

Most of the fossils that we will be examining in Labs 6 to 8 will be considered
at the level of phylum, some to the level of order, and fewer still to the level of
class. Over the next few labs we will gradually introduce more and more of the
major phyla. Figure 6.2 is a thumbnail image of the decision tree chart that will
help you to identify fossils and we will refer back to this chart as each group is
introduced. You can view a larger version or download it as a PDF file by
going back to Guide to Fossil Classification.

 
 Figure 6.2 | Fossil classification
flowchart, thumbnail view. Click here to see a larger version. Click here to download a PDF file.

There are some critical junctions in the flow chart above that require specific
fossil features to be identified. Most of these features were introduced in Lab
5, and others will be introduced with the fossils.

The flow chart decisions include:

 Colonial vs non-colonial life habit: identical individual organisms that live side
by side (colonial) vs. solitary organisms.
 Symmetry: bilateral (side to side or left to right, top to bottom), radial (including
pentameral), asymmetric.
 Shell coiling: planispiral (flat) or consipiral (cone shaped)
 Chambered shells: shells that have internal dividers that separate parts of the
interior shell volume from each other       
 Non-chambered shells: shells in which there is one open space.

Other descriptions in the flow chart that discriminate between branches are
based upon the appearance of the fossil and these are best explained as we
encounter each group.