Question
How does nutrition take place in amoeba?
Solution
Engulfing of Food: Amoeba obtains food by phagocytosis (a type of holozoic nutrition). Amoeba engulfs the food by forming pseudopodia.
Two pseudopodia start growing from opposite sides of food particle from amoeba. They completely encircle the food. The membranes of both the pseudopdia dissolve at the point of touching and the food is encaptured into the Amoeba (one cell body) in a bag known as food vacuole.
Digestion of Food: Inside the food vacuole, complex substances of the food are broken down into simpler one. The digested simple substances diffuse from food vacuole into cytoplasm.
The remaining undigested material is moved near the surface of the single-celled body of amoeba and thrown out.
Fig. 6.8. Engulfing of food by Amoeba
