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What is the biggest single-celled organism? - Murry Gans

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The elephant is a creature of epic proportions — and yet, it owes its enormity to more than 1,000 trillion microscopic cells. And on the epically small end of things, there are likely millions of unicellular species, yet there are very few we can see with the naked eye. Why is that? Why don’t we get unicellular elephants? Or blue whales? Or brown bears? Murry Gans explains.

Imagine twenty people in a room with only a single doorway. The room represents the guts of the cell and the doorway represents the cell membrane. This means that everything the people in the room need or need to get rid of to survive must pass through that doorway. List all of the things that would need to pass into and out of that room for all of the people to survive for a week.

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TED-Ed Animations feature the words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators. Are you an educator or animator interested in creating a TED-Ed Animation? Nominate yourself here »

Meet The Creators

  • Educator Murry Gans
  • Script Editor Emma Bryce
  • Producer Zedem Media
  • Director Michael Kalopaidis
  • Animator Andria Pourouti
  • Illustrator Amanda Kafandari
  • Sound Designer Andreas Trachonitis
  • Narrator Addison Anderson

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