Audience: Students; Grades: 9-12; Science In Indonesia, introduces the story of animal origins by filming underwater explorations made by taxonomist,Christina Diaz. Ms. Diaz classifies some of the 9,000 species of sponge finding in them, vibrant animals who embody the first principles of life and living things. Focusing on cell-to cell communication, she demonstrates how sponges perform the work performed by organs in higher animals and shows how collagen supports sponge structure. She also explains how spicules define the species of sponge and how sponges obtain their food. Computer animation demonstrates how sponges feed and reproduce themselves. Moving to the Woods Hole Biological Laboratory, interviews Mitchell Sogin, an evolutionary biologist, whose experiments in gene sequencing have demonstrated that sponges are at the base of the animal kingdom. For Teacher's Guides go to: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B9ZT7PYcIjLffk5QOEpyUGs2NnQ3cjRETGlnZHB3RjN3VkRrSC1wZWxUQ3pwWGFxRV9lYlU&usp=sharing