Special Feature Lesson:
Feeding Adaptations
Students explore adaptations in behavior and physical features that help animals gather food.
Print out the "Feeding Adaptations" sheet. Make enough photocopies for each student to use. Review the Special Feature story. Define and discuss herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. Discuss examples included in the story of how animals are "designed" according to their feeding habits, such as having teeth for tearing or grinding. Explain that these are adaptations: ways in which species change over time to help them better survive in their environments. Adaptations help an animal get the food it needs and protect it from danger, either from its environment or from other animals. Share other examples of adaptations, such as bees living together in colonies, an arctic fox turning white in winter, a fish's streamlined body, a chameleon's ability to change color and so on. Ask students to suggest other examples. Help them decide if these adaptations are behavioral (have to do with how the animal acts) or physical (have to do with specialized body parts). Hand out copies of the "Feeding Adaptations" sheet. Review the directions. Explain that there may be more than one answer for each animal. When students are finished, discuss their answers as a class. You might make a class chart. Follow up by asking students to review their sheets and identify protective adaptations, i.e., adaptations that protect animals from becoming food for others. Discuss answers as a class.
Challenge students to name 10 adaptations humans have for getting the food they need. Discuss whether these "tricks" have more to do with how people act or how their bodies are designed. Compare and contrast human adaptations to those of other animals.