Common characteristics define living beings as those that obtain energy through nutrition and produce their own matter through autotrophy or heterotrophy. Autotrophs such as plants produce organic compounds from inorganic molecules using light or chemical energy, while heterotrophs such as animals ingest already formed organic material. Living beings also interact with each other and their environment through stimulus and response, such as flowers stimulating insect pollination through color. They reproduce either asexually by single individuals generating offspring or sexually between two individuals of different genders supplying gametes to form new individuals.

1. LIVING BEINGS