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Bacteria Kingdom

The bacteria kingdom is made up of the simplest forms of life on Earth because all bacteria are single-celled organisms. Most of them are harmless, but a few are capable of infecting the human body and causing sicknesses. The phylum of fermenting bacteria includes streptococcus which can cause a sore throats.

Fermenting Bacteria  Phylum:
Streptococcus

Like all other bacteria, streptococcus is a single-celled organism. It cannot tolerate oxygen so it finds places to live which are not exposed to the atmosphere. One such place is inside the human body.

A drawing of bacteria © Alan Damon

A drawing of bacteria

These three bacteria are drawn hundreds of times bigger than their normal size. It would take 1000 of them lined up from end to end to measure one millimetre.

As soon as it enters the body, a bacterium will begin to reproduce by simply splitting in two. The two bacteria will then divide to make a total of four. The next division will produce a total of eight, then sixteen, then thirty-two. When the population of bacteria attains a certain number in an area of the body, they produce an infection. Fever will begin and antibiotics are often taken to kill the bacteria. Bacteria may be extremely small, but they are capable of making people very sick.

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