Life is complex.

There are plenty of single-cell critters. And, of course, lots of multi-cellular creatures, like you and me. You’d expect a whole bunch in the middle — dual-cellular organisms, ten-cell organisms, etc. — but you’d be wrong. There just aren’t adult multicellular organisms with less than a thousand cells, with the 1mm long C. elegans being about as small as it gets. Though they’re hardly animals, there are fungi: there are twenty-cell fungi, making them the simplest multicellular organisms that we know of.

Published by Waldo Jaquith

Waldo Jaquith (JAKE-with) is an open government technologist who lives near Char­lottes­­ville, VA, USA. more »

3 replies on “Life is complex.”

  1. Then again, bacteria of some species (e.g. the Vibrios) are known to form colonies with differentiated cell types. You could consider those to be multicellular organisms, especially when you consider that some of the bacteria become “somatic cells”, incapable of reproduction, serving only to support the colony (organism).

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