Stephen Cole, age 11 of Sioux City, Iowa,

That does an amoeba eat?

There are many, many different kinds of amoeba and they come in assorted sizes. The largest is just big enough for our eyes to see as a small white blob. An average sized amoeba needs about 2,000 of his relatives to help him measure one inch. Such a small creature., of course, needs only a small helping of food. What you would consider a mere crumb would be a supermarket to the amoeba.

The tiny fellow lives in a pond, a stream or a creek and he can even exist in a stagnant pond where there is more mud than water, He enjoys a mixed diet of meat and vegetables which he finds floating in the water. Here there are tiny one celled alga plants, teeming with green chlorophyll. There are busy ones and mildews no larger than the single celled yeasts that make our daily bread, The water teems with countless bacteria of all sorts and sizes and there are countless numbers of single celled animals smaller than the amoeba.

Each drop of water in the amoeba’s pond or creek teens with a vast variety of microscopic living things. Amazing as it may seem, the little amoeba rates ,as a terrible tiger in this slimy jungles He is constantly on the prowl for living, things smaller than himself. True' he travels slower than a snail’s pace, but his tiny victims are even slower and to them he is as swift and deadly as a big cat is to a deer. ,

The amoeba’s salad course is usually a green or brown alga,  ,catches this single called plant as it drifts through the water, He also may catch a cell from a decaying leaf as it drifts a through the water. This morsel would count as a helping of vegetables.

For his meat courses he goes hunting. He may catch a bacterium which counts as a sandwich snack. He may be luckier and catch a small,, single celled animal such as a cilicate, which counts as a steak dinner.  These, cilicates swim through the water with the help of microscopic hairs, but the: terrible amoeba tiger can sometimes catch one.  When  this happens, the cilicate puts up a struggle until it is entirely swallowed.

Perhaps swallowed is not a good word to use, for the amoeba has no mouth, no teethe no throat, In fact he, does not even have a head. His entire body is but a blob of protoplasm, the magic jelly which fills the living cells in every plant and animal. The skin of his body is,a film of clear jelly surrounding the vital granular protoplasm inside.

The amoeba travels by poking out a feeler of jelly this side and that side. These feelers are called pseudopods meaning false feet, and he walks along on tip toe, when a pseudopod his taken a step it is drawn back into the body and another is put forth. The pseudopods are also used to trap and engulf the amoeba’s prey, he wraps one around each side and one over the top of his struggling victim. The food is then enfolded in the granular protoplasm where it is digested.