Bütschli (’92, p. 187) pointed out that it was highly improbable that
pseudopods in contact with a solid substratum were projected in a
fundamentally different way from that in which free pseudopods were
extended, as explained by Berthold. Bütschli assumed that all ameboid
movement was due to the same fundamental cause. He postulated surface
tension as the active agent, as Berthold had done for the extension of
pseudopods in contact with a solid substrate; but Bütschli assumed that
the decrease in surface tension at the anterior end of the ameba was
brought about by the bursting of protoplasmic droplets of a more fluid
consistency on the surface of the ameba, the consistency of which was
less fluid, thus bringing about a decrease of surface tension and
consequent forward streaming of the endoplasm. The necessary migration
of the more fluid droplets to the surface was determined by internal
conditions. The direction in which an ameba moves was assumed to depend
therefore not upon the physical character of the substrate, as suggested
by Berthold, but upon such internal changes as control the movement of
the more liquid part of the internal protoplasm to the outer surface.
Rhumbler (’98) wrote extensively on the subject of ameboid movement,
especially from the point of view of the feeding habits of amebas. He
concluded that the flow of protoplasm, while engulfing a food object,
was a direct result of the lowering of the surface tension of the
protoplasm by contact with the food object (p. 207), thus causing its
envelopment. Numerous other writers of the time, including Quincke
(’88), Verworn (’89, ’92), Blochmann (’94), Bernstein (’00) and Jensen
(’02), agreed in a general way with Rhumbler’s position that surface
tension changes are the cause of locomotion in ameba.
In 1904 the general subject of ameban behavior was extensively studied
by Jennings, and from his observations he concluded that surface tension
cannot account for many of the reactions observed. Other factors, he
held, must be at work, such as contractility, which, acting in the
posterior region, causes the endoplasm to flow forward. But Jennings
found it impossible to explain on the same basis the extension of free
pseudopods, and the creeping of a pseudopod, or of the whole ameba, over
a solid substratum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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