What is ameba or amoeba

An ameba (also spelled amoeba) is a tiny animal. It is so small that it can be seen only through a microscope. If you take a drop of water from a river, swamp, or pond, and look at it through a microscope, you will see several strange shapes that look like splotches of clear jelly with a few dark dots inside them. These jellylike splotches are amebas. They have no legs, feet, arms, or head. When an ameba wants to move, it pushes a part of its body forward like a long foot and the rest of it flows into this foot.

Then it does the same thing all over again and in this way it can move in any direction. Scientists call the foot that the ameba pushes out a pseudopod (meaning "false foot") because it is not really a foot. The ameba has no mouth. When it finds a tiny bit of food it pushes out pseudopods on both sides of the food. These slowly close around it until it is completely surrounded. The food is then drawn inside the ameba's body, where it is kept in a little pocket, called a food vacuole, until it is digested.

The waste material that remains after the food is digested is kept in another little pocket or vacuole. After a time this vacuole rises to the surface of the body and explodes and sprays the waste outside. The ameba has a dark spot inside its jelly called a nucleus which helps it grow and produce other amebas. There are no male or female amebas, and it does net lay eggs like insects and birds or produce young from a mother animal. Instead it just splits in two and then there are two amebas, each with its own nucleus and vacuoles. Most plants and animals are made up of millions of tiny parts called cells, which can only be seen under a microscope.

Human beings are also made up of millions of cells. An ameba has only one cell. There are many one-celled animals besides the ameba. However, ameba cells are different from those of plants, human beings, or the larger animals such as horses, cows, and dogs.