Joe Lesnick, age 10, of Valparaiso, Indiana, for her question:

Is it true that an ameba has no parents?

We might say that he does and he doesn't. This is not so mysterious when you remember that the ameba is a tiny blob of life, too small for our eyes to see. Naturally, we could hardly expect a microscopic one celled animal of this sort to multiply like larger animals, such as cats and dogs. However, new living things can come only from older living things    and even the mini ameba mush obey this rule.

We can hardly call this midget he or she, because it is neither male nor female. When its jellified single cell is well fed, it gets ready to multiply. It does this by dividing into a pair of identical twins. This is done without the help of another ameba. The first cell might be called the parent of the two new ones. On the other hand, no parents were left behind to grow old and die