Now lets take our egg dimensions and roughly construct a table of volumes for these eggs.
Table 1
Egg
Volume (in cubic microns)
Aepyornis
7,500,000,000,000,000
Ostrich
1,100,000,000,000,000
Chicken (hen)
50,000,000,000,000
Hummingbird
400,000,000,000
Human being
1,400,000
As you can see, the range in egg size is tremendous. Even the
smallest bird egg is about 300,000 times as great in volume as the human
ovum, whereas the largest bird egg is nearly 20,000 times as large in volume
as the smallest.
The human ovum (and most mammals) is small because it does not
have to contain its food and water supply within itself as the bird eggs
do. Mammal eggs receive their nutrients from the mother and water from
the mothers blood supply, therefore they are very small.
The Aepyornis egg compares to the hummingbird egg as a large
whale compares to a medium size dog. The hummingbird egg compares to the
human ovum as the largest whale to a mouse. Think of the aircraft carrier
(Aepyornis) with a mouse (human ovum) on its deck.
Yet, even though the bird egg consists of but one cell, it is
not the kind of cell we can consider typical. For one thing, scarcely any
of it is alive. The egg shell certainly isn't alive and the white of the
egg serves only as a water store. The yoke of the egg makes up the true
cell and even that is mostly food supply.
If we really want to consider the size of cells, lets tackle
those that contain a food supply only large enough to last them from day
to day, cells that are largely working material (lets call it protoplasm).
These non-yoke cells range from the limits of visibility downward (not
visible), just as egg cells range from the limits of visibility upward.
In fact there is some overlapping. for instance, the amoeba,
a simple free-living organism consisting of a single cell, has a diameter
of about two hundred microns and a volume of 4,200,000 cubic microns. It
is three times as voluminous as the human ovum.
The cells that make up multicellular organisms are considerably
smaller. The various cells of the human body have volumes varying from
200 to 15,000 cubic microns. A typical liver cell would have a volume of
1,750 cubic microns.
If we include cell-like bodies that are not quite complete cells,
then we can reach smaller volumes. For instance, the human red blood cell,
which is incomplete in that it lacks a nucleus, is considerably smaller
than the ordinary cells of the human body. It has a volume of only 90 cubic
microns.
Then, just as the female ovum is the largest cell produced by
human beings, the male spermatozoon is the smallest cell produced by human
beings. The spermatozoon is mainly nucleus, and only half the normal nucleus
at that. It has a volume of about 17 cubic microns.
This may make it seem to you that the cells making up a multicellular
organism are simply too small to be individual and independent fragments
of life, and that in order to be free-living a cell must be unusually large.
After all, an amoeba is 2,400 times as large as a liver cell, so perhaps
in going from amoeba to liver cell, we have passed the limit of compactness
that can be associated with independent life.
This is not so however. Human cells cannot serve, to be sure,
as individual organisms, but that is only because they are two specialized
and not because they are too small. An individual human cell is quite capable
of movement on its own and living on its own as long as the proper nutrients
and environment are provided for it.
Individual heart muscle cells and individual arm muscle cells
have been placed together under the microscope and observed to move about
in straight lines for other cells of their own kind, they homed in on each
other. All the heart cells came together and as soon as they joined each
other, began to beat in a regular rhythm. The arm muscle cells joined together
and would contract together as a whole when stimulated. Cells know their
place is with similar cells and know what to do as a group. Cells can recognize
and sense their own kind and move to find their own kind. Each group of
human cells have been tested and found to have this ability, even neurons
will move about searching for their own kind and connecting up to each
other.
There are cells that serve as independent organisms that are
far smaller than the amoeba and even smaller than the human spermatozoon.
These are the bacteria.
Even the largest bacterium has a volume of no more than 7 cubic
microns, while the smallest have volumes down to 0.02 cubic microns.
We will summerize this in table 2.
Table 2
Non-yoke cell
volume (in cubic microns)
Amoeba
4,200,000
Human liver cell
1,750
Human red blood cell
90
Human spermatozoom
17
Largest bacterium
7
Smallest bacterium
0.02
Again we have quite a range. A large one celled organism such
as the amoeba is to a small one celled organism as a large whale is to
a half grown mouse. For that matter, the difference between the largest
and smallest bacterium is that between a large elephant and a small boy.
Now then, how on earth can the complexity of life be crammed
into a tiny bacterium one two-hundred-millionth the size of a simple amoeba
?
-- to be continued--
Bless you Bob Lee
--
oozing on the muggy shore of the gulf coast
[email protected]
--
The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver.
To join or quit silver-list or silver-digest send an e-mail message to:
[email protected] -or- [email protected]
with the word subscribe or unsubscribe in the SUBJECT line.
To post, address your message to: [email protected]
Silver-list archive: http://escribe.com/health/thesilverlist/index.html
List maintainer: Mike Devour
