What is Biological?

The biological definition is that it refers to a living organism with kinetic energy, which is also a collection of objects. Whereas, individual organisms refer to living organisms, as opposed to non-living things.

Its elements include: under natural conditions, a living object with the ability to survive and reproduce produced by chemical reactions, and a living offspring produced by it (or them) through reproduction, which can respond to external stimuli accordingly, and can interrely on and promote each other with the external environment. In addition, it can excrete useless substances from the body, and has the characteristics of heredity and variation.

In other words, living objects have the ability to grow, develop, reproduce, have metabolism, have stress, and are capable of genetic variation.

A cell can be said to be the smallest unit in an organism.

For unicellular organisms, a cell is an individual, so a cell is a living organism.

But for multicellular organisms, an individual is made up of many cells, so cells are the constituent units of an organism, not an organism.

In multicellular organisms, each cell has its own life, but each cell cannot complete its own life alone, and cannot embody the characteristics of an individual.

Therefore, for multicellular organisms, the cells in their bodies are not living organisms, and cells are only individuals that make up living organisms, and they are part of living organisms.

But is such a definition really absolutely accurate?

Human beings are living beings, composed of countless cells, and after the cells divide, they will transform themselves into various tissues and form various organs.

As a multicellular organism, it can be said that a human being is a living individual, but can a human being really complete his own life on his own?

I'm afraid not.

Without vegetables, if you only eat meat, you will lack the necessary vitamins and some inorganic salts, which will make people stunted, reduce IQ, and have a reduced memory.

Not to mention various diseases caused by the lack of certain vitamins, such as excessive intake of animal protein, which will cause excessive intake of sulfur-containing amino acids, accelerate the loss of calcium in bones, and easily produce osteoporosis.

If you eat only vegetables without meat, it will cause insufficient intake of animal protein, and the balance of protein, carbohydrates, and fats in the human body will be imbalanced, and many symptoms such as decreased immunity, memory loss, anemia, and indigestion will follow.

In fact, if people only eat vegetables, human reproduction will be reduced, resulting in abnormal reproductive function, and even seriously affect reproductive ability, and human beings may become extinct.

If we don't count these other external creatures, we look inside the human body.

In the human body, there are about 200 kinds of microorganisms that are known to inhabit the human body, and the human body is in a sense a microbial processing plant with all kinds of workshops.

Leaving aside the skin and mouth, which are not significantly beneficial to human life, let's just talk about the human intestines.

There are about 100 trillion microorganisms in the human body, and most of them are distributed in the gut, many of which are beneficial and help the body process complex compounds, as well as produce amino acids and vitamins.

Therefore, the type and quantity of intestinal microbes are closely related to physical health, and are even considered to be very critical to human life. Gut microbes help people get energy from food, and changes in the gut microbiome can also be linked to intestinal diseases or obesity.

Harvard University genomicist Bruce Billen put it this way: "90% of the cells in our body are bacteria, or nine times the number of bacteria in the human body." ”

Most of these bacteria have specific functions for humans and are indispensable for normal life.

"We are not individuals, but a group of organisms. "The vast majority of the microbes in our human bodies are still beneficial to us.

So strictly speaking, a person is not an individual.

All known individual creatures are not actually individuals, they are interdependent and mutually supportive.

Only in such a well-established ecosystem can they be called "individual organisms" and complete their respective lives.

According to this reasoning, we can even think of the entire Earth's biosphere as a living organism that has the ability to self-regulate, and all life forms that have evolved on Earth are part of Gaia.

Just like the cells that make up the human body, similar to the cells, the different life forms that make up the earth's ecosphere interact with each other, so the earth's ecosphere is a real individual life in the strict sense.

This is also a rough and concise version of the "Gaia hypothesis".

But this "strictly speaking" is actually not very strict.

Because the earth also depends on this universe and the sun to survive.

In other words, in science, our definition of individual organisms is actually not accurate.

But if you continue to discuss it like this, it will become an infinite nesting doll, and then it will be meaningless.

Pengcheng, if it is in modern terms, should be regarded as having "Gaia consciousness", because Ouyang found that all the plants in Pengcheng are not a single individual life.

To be precise, it should have been discovered by Daiochis, and then Ouyang summarized it.

The genes of all the plants here were sampled and analyzed by Diochisis, and it was found that although their varieties were diverse, their genes were all affected by a type of bacteria, and this change occurred.

That's right, it's the thallus again.

Whether it is the plague of zombies or the city of plants in Pengcheng, it is because of the fungus.

This kind of fungus led to a convergent evolution of the plants of Pengcheng, which divided the organisms of Pengcheng into two groups, one is woody plants in the plant kingdom, the other is fungi, and a small number of herbaceous plants, bryophytes, and ferns in the plant kingdom.

To put it simply, those who can grow tall are counted as one category, and those who are not tall and can only grow in the shade of trees are counted as one category.

Most plants absorb carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen during photosynthesis during the day, and at night they absorb oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide.

However, under the catalysis of this unknown fungus, the tall plants are cut across the board, and the "magic change" is to inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, while the short creatures are changed to inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen.

Day and night.

It's like reincarnation, endless.

So don't look at the different shapes of these things, they all actually do exactly the same thing.

In addition to these two "plants" (a word that is not strictly used to refer to plants and fungi), there is another plant, to be precise, a small fungus that parasitizes on creepers.

Its size is extremely small, only the thickness of a hair, the length of a small finger, parasitic on the back of the leaf of the creeper.

The number is extremely large, dense, and fluffy, and it looks like white hairs have grown on the back of the leaf.

This "white velvet fungus" can emit a strange smell that cannot be smelled by humans, this smell can attract and even stimulate the "parasite bacteria" in the zombies' brains, prompting them to have the illusion that there is food and breeding ground here, so that they can control the zombies and come to Pengcheng.

It's like the foul-smelling mucus that pitcher plants use to trap insects.

That's right, trapping.

The purpose of "White Velvet Fungus" to attract zombies is to trap zombies, as for what to do after the trapping, it must be needless to say that everyone should know.

Although Ouyang had not yet found a place to "slaughter" zombies, Dai Ochisis found that a large part of the nutrients used by these "plants" coincided with the nutrients of the most essential parasite bacteria of zombies.

Such a high degree of overlap is certainly not due to the discovery of a certain group of minerals rich in nutrients, and even if there is, it cannot be such a coincidence.

The whole Pengcheng is like a creature with a sense of self-independence, using various plants as body organs, self-consuming oxygen and carbon dioxide for breathing, and feeding on zombies to supplement nutrition, and even stimulate its own evolution to a certain extent.

"It's spectacular......"

After Ouyang figured out the operation function of this "city of plants", he couldn't help but sigh like this.

In fact, what is even more spectacular is that the purpose of this induced evolution is most likely to restrain zombies. Deocisis added.

After all, there are all kinds of signs that this "city of plants" does not have its own long legs to hunt zombies, and all other characteristics seem to exist to hunt zombies.

Especially the "white velvet fungus" that only attracts zombies.

"Restrain zombies...... Ouyang pondered for a moment, then shook his head,

"I've had that assumption too, but it's too early to tell. It is only after seeing the 'zombie slaughterhouse' that we can finally confirm whether the two bacteria really have some kind of mutual restraint relationship in terms of species. ”

Whether they should restrain each other or coexist in a "sacrificial" way is still up for debate.

After all, both belong to the bacterium, and this coincidence is too "lucky" to trigger a series of associations.

In fact, Ouyang also thought of another possibility, that is, all the parasitic bacteria were actually released by Pengcheng's fungus, the purpose was to adopt this social form similar to a "beehive", and release zombies as "worker bees" to "collect honey", so as to obtain the energy and nutrients needed.

Once this assumption was thought of by Ouyang, the more he thought about it, the more he felt that it might be true.

After all, all the signs at the moment are on the surface, this "city of plants" doesn't seem to be very friendly to humans, especially after walking so far and not seeing any creatures in the whole city, it feels a little infiltrating.

"Healthy humans found, take immediate containment!"

A voice that spoke in a slightly sluggish tone rang out.