Food Web Facts
Food Web ['fōd] ['web]
Energy passes from one animal to another as they eat plants or one another. This flow of energy from one living thing to another is called a food web.

“Time for dinner” is a welcome sound to just about everyone. Whether it is pizza, roast chicken, a crisp apple, a cold slice of watermelon or another favorite food, most of us enjoy eating.
Food Energy
But eating is not just for the good taste it brings. Eating food gives us the energy we need to live. This energy powers everything you do from playing a favorite sport to studying for a math test or goofing around with your friends. It helps you fight off illness and helps you think. It makes you grow and keeps your heart beating and the blood circulating through your body. Without energy, you could not live. The same goes for every living thing on earth. Microbes, beetles, mice, hawks, flowers, salmon, crayfish, trees, elk … if it's alive, it needs energy.
So, where does all this energy come from? How does it get passed around to all living things? Energy passes from one animal to another as they eat plants or one another. This flow of energy from one living thing to another is called a “food chain or a food web”. Let's take a closer look…
Producers

To understand food chains and food webs, we must start with where the energy begins. Sunlight is energy, and plants use this energy to turn water and carbon dioxide into plant food. This process is called “photosynthesis”. Plants also need minerals and nutrients. They get these from the soil when their roots take up water. While this might not sound like the kind of food you would want to eat, this plant food allows plants to grow, flower, and produce things like acorns, potatoes, carrots, apples, pecans, and many other kinds of fruits.

Because plants make so much energy, they are called “producers”. Their ability to use sunlight to make food makes them a very important source of energy for other living things. Think about all the animals that eat plants. Wow, it's mind-boggling! Now, think about all the places that plants grow. From the oceans to the deserts to the mountaintops, plants can be found nearly everywhere basking in the sunlight and making their own food. And wherever plants grow, animals that depend upon them are sure to be found.
Primary Consumers

Animals that eat only plants are herbivores. In a food chain, they are called the “primary consumers”. This is because they are the first animals that eat the plants. Energy stored in the plant moves into the herbivore when it eats the plant. This energy is then used by that herbivore.

Think about you eating a fresh tomato out of your family's garden. In that case, you are the primary consumer of the tomato. Your body will use the energy from the tomato. This makes a basic food chain with two links, the tomato and you.
In the wild, a basic food chain would be plants and bison. The bison is the primary consumer of the plants which are the producers of the energy which comes from photosynthesis which is powered by the sun. Whew! But that is often not the end of the story!
Secondary Consumers

Many primary consumers are very small creatures that make great snacks for larger animals. A grasshopper eats the grass and a small mammal called a shrew eats the grasshopper. The shrew becomes the “secondary consumer” because it eats the animal that eats the plants. Other secondary consumers can enter the picture when they, in turn, eat the first secondary consumer, in this case the shrew.
These food chains can have many links. Check out this food chain:

plant → grasshopper → bird→ snake→ rodent → fox ← rodent ← insect ← tree

The plant is the producer and the grasshopper is the primary consumer. All the other animals are secondary consumers. As the grasshopper eats the plant and the other animals eat one another, energy is passed along the food chain. This energy helps each animal survive until it is eaten by another animal or it dies. Both primary and secondary consumers also feed their babies, passing along energy to their growing youngsters.
Tertiary Consumers

At the top of the food chain is the tertiary consumer. They are the carnivores that eat the carnivores. Often, they do not have predators. Humans fall into this category, but so do many other large animals such as lions, bears, and sharks. There are times of course, where a tertiary consumer does fall victim to another predator.
As you can see from our food chain, one consumer can be eaten by another. Food chains only tend to be short if the primary consumer is a very large animal with few predators. Large herbivores such as moose, elephants, bison, or giraffes have few predators because they are so large and powerful. Their food chains are short. But what happens to the energy stored in their large bodies when they die? Enter the scavengers and decomposers!
The Clean-Up Crew: Scavengers and Decomposers

Not all plants and animals get eaten by consumers. Some are lucky enough to live out their lives and die of old age. Others get sick or suffer an accident that kills them. What is left is the dead plant or animal filled with the energy from the food it ate or made. So, what happens to that energy? Nothing in nature is wasted and that includes dead stuff.
When an animal dies, its body begins to break down. In other words, it rots, getting stinky, gross, and pretty disgusting. But all that yucky stuff is just another link in the food chain as energy is passed along to others that can use it.

The first members of the clean-up crew are the scavengers. They are attracted to a dead animal by the smell, and by seeing other scavengers. A familiar scavenger is the turkey vulture. These fascinating birds are very well adapted to their jobs, using their excellent sense of smell to find their food. And smell is a big hint that something dead is lying around! Scavengers you may have seen include many familiar animals such as coyotes, crows, magpies, foxes, bald eagles, bears, ravens, and even small songbirds such as chickadees.
As the scavengers tear apart a dead animal, the decomposers begin their work. Insects are very important decomposers. Fly maggots, ants, beetles, moths, and others continue to break down the dead animal. They eat it, lay their eggs on it (which hatch into larvae that eat it), or chew through it. Bacteria and fungi continue the process of decomposition until nothing is left, and all the energy that was once in the animal is used up by other living things. This all sounds pretty disgusting, but think about a world with no scavengers or decomposers to clean up dead things. Yuck!!

The scavengers and decomposers help move energy through the food chain. Bacteria and fungi return it to the soil where plants can once again use it. (See the picture below.) Consumers use it as they eat the plants or the scavengers and decomposers. Many food chains are created and these food chains become a food web with living things all dependent upon each other for survival.
So What is a Food Web?
A food web is just another layer of the entire process. A food chain is a simplified version of what really happens in nature. Very few animals just eat one food. A food web is nature's way of making sure that there is food to go around. Let's use the simple food chain we used earlier. Imagine if a plant disease caused the one plant eaten by the grasshopper to die out. There would be no food for grasshoppers and they would eventually die.

sunlight → plants → primary consumers → secondary consumers → tertiary consumers → scavengers and decomposers
The secondary consumers would have no food either. Spiders would die for lack of food, causing the shrews to also go hungry. You can imagine how that would affect the weasel, the red-tailed hawk and the great-horned owl. The scavengers and decomposers would be the only ones who would feast!!! But just for a short time – after that there might not be any animals left at all. A food web protects the balance of food and consumers by spreading the food sources and the eaters around.
Here is a possible food web for our sample group of living creatures. The arrows point in the direction of the energy flow — from source to consumer.
One thing that our sample does not show is that the grasshopper does not eat just one plant, but eats from many different plants. Take a look at this very simple comparison between another food chain and a food web here.
You and the Food Chain

Where do you fit into the food chain? Because you are an omnivore and eat both plants and animals, you are a primary and a secondary consumer. In most cases, you are also the tertiary consumer. The carrot you ate at lunch makes you a primary consumer. But the meatloaf you ate for dinner makes you a secondary consumer. Fortunately, unless you live next door to a family of cannibals, you will probably not have to worry about another secondary consumer trying to eat you! But even though people are mostly secondary consumers, we still cannot escape the decomposers. When someone gets very old and dies their energy is eventually returned to the soil where it will be taken up by plants to begin a new food chain and continue the circle of life.
Build a Food Web

Here is a fun activity to try with your class, scout troop, or youth group. Get a large ball of yarn and have everyone make a large circle. One student holds the free end of the yarn. This student represents the sun. The “sun” tosses the ball of yarn to another student, but keeps hold of the free end. That student tells the group what part of the food chain they will be (“I am a plant or I am a hawk, etc.&”). They should unravel some of the yarn, hold on to it and toss the yarn ball to another student who also announces what part of the food chain they will be. Remember to hold on to part of the yarn before you toss the yarn ball. Continue tossing the yarn ball until every student is holding part of the yarn. One student tells the group what they are and begins to tug on the yarn. As other students feel the tug, they should tug back. What happens? What does this tell you about food webs?
Fun Links
Food chains are part of the life cycle. See PBS – The Living Edens.
Watch Wild Kratts – Up the Ocean Food Chain.
Geography4kids has a great resource on food chains.
Find out what a decomposer is.
Learn about food chains and food webs with great photos at DK Find Out.
Look over four different food webs:
Top 10 Questions
March 2015
Thanks to Adare Evans, Wildlife Educator, Idaho Department of Fish and Game; and Dr. Holly Holman, Veterinarian, Zoo Boise for the answers.
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What is the purpose of the food chain?
A food chain is when animal A eats animal B, then animal B eats animal C, which eats another animal and so on until you reach the top animal in the chain. The food chain gives us an idea of how energy and nutrients flow through the environment. It helps us because if one animal is discovered to have a strange chemical in it, we can determine where the chemical originated. What food did they consume that was contaminated with something they should not have had. For example, the peregrine falcon, which was declining in population, was detected with DDT. DDT was used to help control the insect population in order to help plants grow. Birds were eating insects, and the insects were eating plants that had been sprayed with DDT. Without looking at the animal’s food chain, we never would have known that. The food chain helps us see how everything is connected (From Jonah at Basin Elementary School in Idaho City)
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Why is it called the food web?
It is called the food web because when you interconnect the food chains, they make a spider-like pattern (From Helena at Basin Elementary School in Idaho City)
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What are decomposers?
Decomposers are usually small animals or organisms that eat the dead stuff left behind. They are things like bacteria, fungi and mold. For instance, they may eat a dead fish that is decomposing and turn what they eat into micronutrients that go into the soil. This makes energy that plants use so they can grow. Without decomposing, there wouldn’t be all the micronutrients that plants use to help them grow (From Samuel at Dalton Elementary School in Dalton Gardens)
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How are food chains and food webs different?
Food chains are a linear model showing how energy transfers within one organism to the next. The food web shows how the energy is transferred among many different organisms, showing the web-like pattern. Food webs show how different organisms are connected with one another. Look at a salamander and a wolf. It may not seem like they are connected, but a salamander is in the water and eats aquatic insects. The insect it eats may have eaten a cattail. The wolf eats moose, and the moose may have eaten cattails (From Jaden at Galileo Stem Academy in Eagle)
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What is at the top of the food chain for the whole world?
There is not one particular animal that is at the top of the chain. However, there are several large predators that we think of when thinking about the top like lions, tigers and bears. Humans are also at the top. Ultimately, there are a wide variety of animals that are at or near the top of their food chain (From Benjamin at Cynthia Mann Elementary School in Boise)
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Is water part of a food web?
Water is found in living things. If you consider it that way, then the answer is yes (From Charles at Galileo Stem Academy in Eagle)
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Is the grizzly bear on the top of the food chain?
The grizzly bear is one of the animals on the top of the food chain. They are omnivores, meaning they eat both animals and plants (From CJ at Basin Elementary School in Idaho City)
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When plants and animals die, which organisms help to return nutrients to the food chain?
The animals that return nutrients to the food chain are the decomposers. You also have to look at scavengers, which are animals that may eat a magpie or a worm. They are also returning, through their poop, all those nutrients. So it’s the scavengers and the decomposers together that help to break down a dead animal and return nutrients to the food chain (From Aliany at Rochester NY School #25 in Rochester, New York)
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Do animals eat lots of different kinds of animals?
Yes. Animals eat all different kinds of animals. This leads to proteins, minerals and vitamins that are broken down into their bodies, as well as ours. They get everything they need to live the different things that they eat (From Audrey at Galileo Stem Academy in Eagle)
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Are there keystone animals in the food web?
A keystone animal is one that is so important because it holds the whole environment together. A salmon is a keystone animal for Idaho. Salmon are important because they travel. Idaho’s salmon go to the Pacific Ocean and there, they eat tons of plankton. They fill up on krill and come back to Idaho, bringing back all of those nutrients. Salmon feed so many animals. They feed people, otters, muskrats, bears, raccoons and more. Believe it or not, we can see it in the growth rings of trees when there has been a good salmon year. Salmon, for Idaho, is a keystone species because they are a part of so many food chains (From Harrison via the Internet)