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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel bomb here. From the outside, plants seem pretty

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Speaker 1: different from animals. For instance, plants can't walk around and

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Speaker 1: catch food like we do, they give up oxygen instead

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Speaker 1: of carbon dioxide, and they don't have the same sensory

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Speaker 1: organs that help us get out of the way of

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Speaker 1: a fire or sniff out and hunt down a potential meal.

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Speaker 1: But plants and animals are more similar than they might

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Speaker 1: seem from the outside. Under a microscope, a plant cell

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Speaker 1: and an animal cell might seem so similar that in

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Speaker 1: some cases you'd really have to know what you're looking

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Speaker 1: at to tell the difference between them. This is because

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Speaker 1: plants and animals both belong to the domain eukaryota, organisms

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Speaker 1: with cells that are basically sealed baggies full of fluid,

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Speaker 1: suspending little factories called organelles, which have different jobs in

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Speaker 1: the cell depending on the needs of the organism. Plants, animals, fungi,

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Speaker 1: and protests are all eukaryotes. These organisms are made up

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Speaker 1: of one or more cells with a variety of membrane

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Speaker 1: owned organelles, including the nucleus, the big boss organelle that

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Speaker 1: contains all the DNA and instructions for making that particular

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Speaker 1: bear or ring worm, or ficus tree, or fruit fly

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Speaker 1: or human being. Even though a blueberry bush and a

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Speaker 1: corgi don't seem to have much in common on the

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Speaker 1: spectrum of things, their cells are way more similar to

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Speaker 1: each other than they are to those of bacteria, for example,

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Speaker 1: which are prokaryotes, single celled organisms that are generally smaller

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Speaker 1: than a single eukaryotic cell, that contain only a few

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Speaker 1: types of rudimentary organelles, and that lack a nucleus to

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Speaker 1: hold their DNA. The word eukaryote means true kernel, referring

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Speaker 1: to that important nucleus. It's kind of a mess inside

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Speaker 1: a prokaryotic cell, whereas eukaryotic cells are highly structured. But

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Speaker 1: at the end of the day, eukaryotes and prokaryotes have

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Speaker 1: more in common with each other than they do with

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Speaker 1: a rock. So there's that. If plants and animals are

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Speaker 1: so similar on a cellular level, why do they seem

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Speaker 1: so different when you take a couple steps back. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's because plants and animals have different goals. Each of

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Speaker 1: their eukaryotic cells is customized to make them great at

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Speaker 1: being what they are. For instance, it's a plant's job

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Speaker 1: to take carbon dioxide out of the air, which we

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Speaker 1: animals just leave lying around every time we exhale or

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Speaker 1: drive a car, and plants can simply add a little

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Speaker 1: sunlight and water to that CEO two in order to

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Speaker 1: make literally everything they need to survive. Animals, on the

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Speaker 1: other hand, require oxygen made by plants to breathe, but

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Speaker 1: we can't make our own food like plants do, so

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Speaker 1: we've got to go rustle up our own grub. This

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Speaker 1: requires movement, which made it necessary for animals to evolve

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Speaker 1: all kinds of crazy specialized cell types, tissues, and organs

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Speaker 1: that a plant can't make because they simply don't need them.

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Speaker 1: Survival is based on getting basic needs met, and the

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Speaker 1: outsourced requirements of an animal far surpass those of plants,

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Speaker 1: even though their cells are constructed similarly, plants and animals

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Speaker 1: have different cellular settings. A really obvious prints is in

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Speaker 1: the outer shell of the cell. In addition to a

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Speaker 1: cell membrane, plants have cell walls made out of tough

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Speaker 1: compounds called cellulose and lignin, which makes them rigid and tough,

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Speaker 1: useful for keeping trees from collapsing into gelatinous piles. Animal cells,

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Speaker 1: on the other hand, are contained within a thin cell membrane,

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Speaker 1: a flexible container a lot like a semipermeable sandwich bag.

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Speaker 1: It provides nothing in the way of structure, but it

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Speaker 1: can regulate what comes in and out of the cell,

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Speaker 1: and it can keep all the organelles contained within it.

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Speaker 1: Animals have all kinds of fancy organelles that help them

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Speaker 1: form some pretty mind blowing structures like bones, muscles, and nerves.

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Speaker 1: These organelles are what allow animals to build empires honestly,

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Speaker 1: but one organelle animals don't have is the chloroplast, which

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Speaker 1: allows plans to photosynthesize, or make sunlight into glucose compounds.

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Speaker 1: So any green you see on a plant, the leaf,

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Speaker 1: the stem, and the peel of an unripe banana all

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Speaker 1: comes from the chloroplasts in their cells, turning light into

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Speaker 1: food and try that animals. One other important difference between

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Speaker 1: plant and animal cells can be found in another organelle

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Speaker 1: called a vacuule. Some animal cells contain vacuoles, but in

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Speaker 1: a plant cell, they're really large and have an important

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Speaker 1: job keeping the plant from wilting. Vacuoles are basically intercellular

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Speaker 1: water balloons that keep the cell plumped up from the

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Speaker 1: inside by creating turgore pressure of pushing the cell membrane

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Speaker 1: against the cell wall, and helping the plant keep its shape.

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Speaker 1: If you've ever seen a pitiful carrot at the bottom

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Speaker 1: of your crisper drawer, I'll floppy and on appetizing. It's

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Speaker 1: the loss of turgore pressure and its vacules that ultimately

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Speaker 1: landed it in the compost bin. And that's about all

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Speaker 1: that separates you from a plant. Today's episode was written

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Speaker 1: by Jesseline Shields and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff

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Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.

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Speaker 1: For more in this and lots of other highly specialized

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Speaker 1: topics because at our home planet, how stuff Works dot

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Speaker 1: com and for more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit

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