Food chains
All animals and plants need food to live and they are all part of a food chain.
Watch: What is a food chain?
Find out how all living things are in a food chain.
What is a food chain?
All living things including humans, animals and plants need energy to live.
But, where do they get their energy from?
The answer is easy - all living things get their energy from food.
Plants make their own food with the help of sunlight, air and water.
Animals and humans don't produce their own food, so they need to eat plants or other animals to get energy and survive.
They are all part of a food chain.
A food chain shows how plants and animals depend on each other as their source of food.
For instance, a caterpillar eats plants, mice eat caterpillars and owls eat mice.
There! A perfectly simple food chain.
And we can see food chains happening underwater too.
Algae is eaten by small fish, small fish are eaten by bigger fish, and bigger fish are eaten by sea lions who are then eaten by sharks!
There are lots of different food chains taking place around us but food chains usually start with a plant and finish with a big hungry animal…
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Producers and consumers
- Plants make food using energy from the sun. They are called producers.
- Animals are called consumers because they eat plants and other animals.
- Animals that eat other animals are called predators.
- The animals that are eaten are called prey.
Snail vs hedgehog - predator or prey?
Image caption, Hedgehogs eat snails so they are predators.
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Activity 1: Food chains quiz
Activity 2: Finding food chains
Can you draw a food chain? You can draw your own or use the worksheet below to help.
Food chain worksheet
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