Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel bomb here. From the outside, plants seem pretty
Speaker 1: different from animals. For instance, plants can't walk around and
Speaker 1: catch food like we do, they give up oxygen instead
Speaker 1: of carbon dioxide, and they don't have the same sensory
Speaker 1: organs that help us get out of the way of
Speaker 1: a fire or sniff out and hunt down a potential meal.
Speaker 1: But plants and animals are more similar than they might
Speaker 1: seem from the outside. Under a microscope, a plant cell
Speaker 1: and an animal cell might seem so similar that in
Speaker 1: some cases you'd really have to know what you're looking
Speaker 1: at to tell the difference between them. This is because
Speaker 1: plants and animals both belong to the domain eukaryota, organisms
Speaker 1: with cells that are basically sealed baggies full of fluid,
Speaker 1: suspending little factories called organelles, which have different jobs in
Speaker 1: the cell depending on the needs of the organism. Plants, animals, fungi,
Speaker 1: and protests are all eukaryotes. These organisms are made up
Speaker 1: of one or more cells with a variety of membrane
Speaker 1: owned organelles, including the nucleus, the big boss organelle that
Speaker 1: contains all the DNA and instructions for making that particular
Speaker 1: bear or ring worm, or ficus tree, or fruit fly
Speaker 1: or human being. Even though a blueberry bush and a
Speaker 1: corgi don't seem to have much in common on the
Speaker 1: spectrum of things, their cells are way more similar to
Speaker 1: each other than they are to those of bacteria, for example,
Speaker 1: which are prokaryotes, single celled organisms that are generally smaller
Speaker 1: than a single eukaryotic cell, that contain only a few
Speaker 1: types of rudimentary organelles, and that lack a nucleus to
Speaker 1: hold their DNA. The word eukaryote means true kernel, referring
Speaker 1: to that important nucleus. It's kind of a mess inside
Speaker 1: a prokaryotic cell, whereas eukaryotic cells are highly structured. But
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, eukaryotes and prokaryotes have
Speaker 1: more in common with each other than they do with
Speaker 1: a rock. So there's that. If plants and animals are
Speaker 1: so similar on a cellular level, why do they seem
Speaker 1: so different when you take a couple steps back. Well,
Speaker 1: it's because plants and animals have different goals. Each of
Speaker 1: their eukaryotic cells is customized to make them great at
Speaker 1: being what they are. For instance, it's a plant's job
Speaker 1: to take carbon dioxide out of the air, which we
Speaker 1: animals just leave lying around every time we exhale or
Speaker 1: drive a car, and plants can simply add a little
Speaker 1: sunlight and water to that CEO two in order to
Speaker 1: make literally everything they need to survive. Animals, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, require oxygen made by plants to breathe, but
Speaker 1: we can't make our own food like plants do, so
Speaker 1: we've got to go rustle up our own grub. This
Speaker 1: requires movement, which made it necessary for animals to evolve
Speaker 1: all kinds of crazy specialized cell types, tissues, and organs
Speaker 1: that a plant can't make because they simply don't need them.
Speaker 1: Survival is based on getting basic needs met, and the
Speaker 1: outsourced requirements of an animal far surpass those of plants,
Speaker 1: even though their cells are constructed similarly, plants and animals
Speaker 1: have different cellular settings. A really obvious prints is in
Speaker 1: the outer shell of the cell. In addition to a
Speaker 1: cell membrane, plants have cell walls made out of tough
Speaker 1: compounds called cellulose and lignin, which makes them rigid and tough,
Speaker 1: useful for keeping trees from collapsing into gelatinous piles. Animal cells,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, are contained within a thin cell membrane,
Speaker 1: a flexible container a lot like a semipermeable sandwich bag.
Speaker 1: It provides nothing in the way of structure, but it
Speaker 1: can regulate what comes in and out of the cell,
Speaker 1: and it can keep all the organelles contained within it.
Speaker 1: Animals have all kinds of fancy organelles that help them
Speaker 1: form some pretty mind blowing structures like bones, muscles, and nerves.
Speaker 1: These organelles are what allow animals to build empires honestly,
Speaker 1: but one organelle animals don't have is the chloroplast, which
Speaker 1: allows plans to photosynthesize, or make sunlight into glucose compounds.
Speaker 1: So any green you see on a plant, the leaf,
Speaker 1: the stem, and the peel of an unripe banana all
Speaker 1: comes from the chloroplasts in their cells, turning light into
Speaker 1: food and try that animals. One other important difference between
Speaker 1: plant and animal cells can be found in another organelle
Speaker 1: called a vacuule. Some animal cells contain vacuoles, but in
Speaker 1: a plant cell, they're really large and have an important
Speaker 1: job keeping the plant from wilting. Vacuoles are basically intercellular
Speaker 1: water balloons that keep the cell plumped up from the
Speaker 1: inside by creating turgore pressure of pushing the cell membrane
Speaker 1: against the cell wall, and helping the plant keep its shape.
Speaker 1: If you've ever seen a pitiful carrot at the bottom
Speaker 1: of your crisper drawer, I'll floppy and on appetizing. It's
Speaker 1: the loss of turgore pressure and its vacules that ultimately
Speaker 1: landed it in the compost bin. And that's about all
Speaker 1: that separates you from a plant. Today's episode was written
Speaker 1: by Jesseline Shields and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: For more in this and lots of other highly specialized
Speaker 1: topics because at our home planet, how stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com and for more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
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