OPPapers.com

The Invisible Ruler Of All Creatures

THE INVISIBLE RULER OF ALL CREATURES

When we are talking about the ultimate life form, we all look at it from our own points of view. No matter to what genus and species we belong to, still, we would like to think of ourselves as the highest life form. Take you humans, for example, just because you occupy most of the earth surface with your buildings and roads, you think you are the superior species. Just because you have the knowledge to control other species, you think you are more advanced than all of them. Just because you have the ability to build houses that shelters you in any climate, you think you are the most adoptable beings. Just because you have the weapons to kill any organism, you think you are the strongest. Well, I have news for you; you are not the highest life form as you thought you are. You humans may be more sophisticated organism but we are the simplest organisms and have occupied the earth much longer than you. You have been trying to eliminate us for centuries but never succeeded. And the most ironic part of it is that you cannot even live without us.
We, the bacteria, are the simplest life form. Our simple body structure allows us to adapt to different environments with ease. We can tolerate a wide range of pH, temperatures, and pressures. Swimming for a human in water at low temperatures can be dangerous and even lethal, but for most of us it is our natural habitat. Same way, humans cannot tolerate an environments of higher or lower pH, whereas, acidophilic bacteria can easily survive extreme low pH (Prescott 2002).
The fact that bacteria appeared on earth about 3.5 billion years ago and humans only about 100 thousand years ago, based on the fossil records, shows already our survival skills (Campbell 1996). During the early age of the earth, 3.5 billion years ago, earth’s climate was inhabitable for humans. The absence of ozone caused dangerous levels of cosmic rays and increased the temperature. Bacteria,...