What is the biggest single-celled organism? - Murry Gans

The elephant is a creature of epic proportions — and yet, it owes its enormity to more than 1,000 trillion microscopic cells. And on the epically small end of things, there are likely millions of unicellular species, yet there are very few we can see with the naked eye. Why is that? Why don’t we get unicellular elephants? Or blue whales? Or brown bears? Murry Gans explains.

Lesson by Murry Gans, animation by Zedem Media.

[Hakasedess]

The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

[violet_cat.]

We interrupt "What is the biggest cell" to bring you "Why cells are small"

[carolineboisvert-storey]

How is it that you always seem to publish exactly what I need for my classroom days/hours before I need them?!? You are fantastic! Keep up the great work!

[nick.t]

Wait, isn't 1, 000 trillion a quadrillion or something

[ProSad.d]

3:00 is when the real topic sadly ends too🙁

[sophiag]

I love the narrators voice!! Sometimes I listen to him before going to bed so I can fall asleep faster, it really works!!

[-.._.-_...-_.._-..__..._.-.-.-]

We have a neuron that stretches from the spine to the foot??

[KnakuanaRka]

As for that bit about the surface area and volume of a cell, I’ve heard it called the square/cube law; basically, an object’s surface area scales with the square of its length, but the volume scales with its cube, so the latter increases more when an object is scaled up. Just thought they could have explained that better.

[carsonjl]

The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell

[raghu]

Interesting! So the limit to the size of a cell is essentially a trade-off between it's sustenance and waste excretion! 🙂

[HisRoyalStignes]

Finding out that I have a metre long neutron running down my leg kind freaks me out. Oh fuck, I just realised, there's one in the other leg too

[Bankstercide]

There are actually some rather large single celled protozoa dwelling on the Abyssal Plain. Apparently the environment down there is stable (and hostile) enough to allow such fragile creatures to survive.

[greennin]

Fun fact, MurryGans are also the heaviest multi-celled organisms

[deejay]

I’m lost the moment he calculated the cube 😂

[yichern]

Why is it that Ted-Ed always ends their videos with some of the most beautiful sentences ever.

[Gingenus]

I've been looking for a video like this! thanks TED-Ed

[lukasobi]

What is the biggest organism only with a single nuclei?

[Elliandr]

What about the pseudoplasmodium of coenocytic slime mold? The aggregate form has a single cell wall, and it's capable of basic learning about it's environment (remembering, somehow, interval conditions as an example) and while these usually don't get very big, they can, and they can also subdivide back into separate smaller units.

[nickgushard]

Fascinating how it convergently evolved fronds like a fern to increase surface area

[shatteringeye]

Now that I know how incredibly thin and delicate my spine to leg nerve cell is, I feel like I’ll be paralyzed any second.