Food chain does not start with an animal.
Answers
Answer:
then it will start with a plant
Plants are called producers because they are able to use light energy from the sun to produce food (sugar) from carbon dioxide and water. Animals cannot make their own food so they must eat plants and/or other animals. They are called consumers. There are three groups of consumers. Animals that eat only plants are called herbivores (or primary consumers). Animals that eat other animals are called carnivores. Carnivores that eat herbivores are called secondary consumers, and carnivores that eat other carnivores are called tertiary consumers. Animals and people who eat both animals and plants are called omnivores. Then there are decomposers (bacteria, fungi, and even some worms), which feed on decaying matter. These decomposers speed up the decaying process that releases mineral salts back into the food chain for absorption by plants as nutrients.
In a food chain, energy is passed from one link to another. When a herbivore eats, only a fraction of the energy (that it gets from the plant food) becomes new body mass; the rest of the energy is lost as waste or used up by the herbivore to carry out its life processes (e.g., movement, digestion, reproduction). Therefore, when the herbivore is eaten by a carnivore, it passes only a small amount of total energy (that it has received) to the carnivore. Of the energy transferred from the herbivore to the carnivore, some energy will be “wasted” or “used up” by the carnivore. The carnivore then has to eat many herbivores to get enough energy to grow. Because of the large amount of energy that is lost at each link, the amount of energy that is transferred decreases each time. The further along the food chain you go, the less food (and hence energy) remains available.
Food chains can also be represented in different forms such as this pyramid.
The above energy pyramid shows many trees and shrubs providing food and energy to giraffes. Note that as we go up, there are fewer giraffes than trees and shrubs and even fewer lions than giraffes. As we go further along a food chain, there are fewer and fewer consumers. In other words, a large mass of living things at the base is required to support a few at the top. Many herbivores are needed to support a few carnivores. Most food chains have no more than four or five links. There cannot be too many links in a single food chain because the animals at the end of the chain would not get enough food (and hence, energy) to stay alive.
Most animals are part of more than one food chain and eat more than one kind of food in order to meet their food and energy requirements. These interconnected food chains form a food web. Food chains can get complicated because animals usually eat a variety of food.
MATERIALS
Food Chains
Enough strips of colored paper so that each student has four, one on which to draw the sun, one on which to draw a producer, one on which to draw a primary consumer and one on which to draw a secondary consumer.
Food Web
Blank cards
Colored pencils
Yarn
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