Animal Adaptation

Using the San Diego Zoo's Adaptations Connection guide (pp 31-34), write a story about what happens when a predator and prey animal meet, describing how the animal uses its special adaptation.

Read the informational text for 4th grade entitled Adaptation and Survival. Select five vocabulary words from the text to define and explain.

Select an animal and, using multiple sources, research its adaptations. Write a report on the way the animal is adapted to its environment.

Color and cut out butterflies that are red, green and yellow (some the color of grass or indoor carpet, others in contrasting colors.) Scatter the butterflies on the grass or carpet and retrieve them within 15 seconds. Count and compare the number of camouflaged-colored butterflies collected with the number of contrasting-colored butterflies.

Use this Amazing Animal Senses chart. Using facts comparing animal and human senses, determine how much more acute a particular animal's given sense is than a human's. Examples: catfish have 100,000 taste receptors and human have 10,000. Mice can hear frequencies of 1,000 Hz and humans can hear frequencies of 20 Hz. Elephants have 2,000 scent receptors and humans have 400.

Use Migration Math as a model. Given a migrating bird's speed and the length of its journey, determine how long it will take to make the migration journey.

All living things need food and water to live and grow. Examples could include the different kinds of food needed by different types of animals, the requirement of plants to have light; and, that all living things need water.

Different animals use their body parts in different ways to see, hear, protect themselves, move from place to place, and seek, find, and take in food. Examples of human problems that can be solved by mimicking plants or animal solutions could include designing clothing or equipment to protect bicyclists by mimicking turtle shells and animal scales; stabilizing structures by mimicking animal tails, keeping out intruders by mimicking animal quills, and detecting intruders by mimicking animal eyes and ears.

Adult animals can have young. In many kinds of animals, parents and offspring engage in behaviors that help offspring to survive.

Plants depend on animals to move their seeds around. Designs can be conveyed through sketches, drawings, or physical models.

There are many different kinds of living things in any area, and they exist in different places on land and in water. Emphasis is on the diversity of living things in each of a variety of specific habitats.

Being part of a group helps animals obtain food, defend themselves, and cope with changes. Groups may serve different functions and vary in size.

Many characteristics of organisms are inherited from their parents.

Animals have various body parts and systems with specific functions for sustaining life.

Examples could be plants that have larger thorns may be less likely to be eaten by predators; and animals that have better camouflage coloration may be more likely to survive and therefore more likely to leave offspring. Populations of animals are classified by their characteristics.

Populations live in a variety of habitats, and change in those habitats affects the organism living there. When the environment changes in ways that affect a habitat, some organisms survive and reproduce, others move to new locations, others move into the transformed environment, and some die.

Emphasis is on inferring general patterns of relatedness among structures of different organisms.

Natural selection leads to the predominance of certain traits in a population, and the suppression of others. Emphasis is on using concepts of natural selection like passage of time, selection of favorable traits, and heritability of traits.

Adaptation by natural selection acting over generations is one important process by which species change over time in response to changes in environmental conditions. Traits that support successful survival and reproduction in the new environment become more common; those that do not become less common. Emphasis is on using mathematical models, probability statements, and proportional reasoning to support explanations of trends in changes to populations over time. Examples could include peppered moth population changes before and after the industrial revolution.

Ecosystems are dynamic in nature; their characteristics can vary over time. Disruptions to any physical or biological component of an ecosystem can lead to shifts in its populations. Emphasis is on recognizing patterns in data and making warranted inferences about changes in populations, and on evaluating empirical evidence supporting arguments about changes to ecosystems.

Biodiversity describes the variety of species found in Earth's terrestrial and oceanic ecosystems. The completeness or integrity of an ecosystem's biodiversity is often used as a measure of its health.