What does time do to you? And what about animals, plants or fungi? There are many effects and events that happen too slowly to be seen properly. But if you make a timelapse film, you can still make them visible. You do this simply by making images and playing them back in quick succession.
Scroll through the different life stages of animals, plants and fungi. You can see how a caterpillar first becomes a pupa and then a butterfly, or how a seed grows into a plant.
Life stages of parasites
A parasite is a creature that only survives in or on a host. How many parasites do you know? Name as many as you can.
The life of a parasite is not that simple. To go from an egg to an adult parasite, they sometimes need several hosts. Their life stages can be very complicated.
Take the lancet liver fluke. This flatworm has to jump from animal to animal to live its life. And it has some nasty tricks up its sleeve!
Nestling snugly in the excrement of cows (or other grazing animals), the lancet liver fluke starts life as an egg. Snails come along and eat the poop along with the eggs. In the body of the snail, small larvae then hatch from the eggs. They leave the snail as little slime balls which, strangely enough, are a delicacy for ants.
After being eaten by ants, the flatworms become deadly. Most will stay in the ant’s abdomen, but one flatworm takes over the ant’s brain. It commands the ant to sit on top of a blade of grass. After being eaten by cows, the flatworms can lay eggs and the whole cycle begins again.