الأسبوع 1 · المحور الأول «الأنظمة»، الوحدة الأولى «العلاقات الغذائية بين الكائنات الحية»: ابدأ، المفهوم 1.1 «احتياجات النبات» (أ): ما تحتاجه النباتات لتنمو · 3 دروس
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Where does an animal’s energy come from?
Discovery Education Science P5: Term 1, Unit 1, pp. 2–3
GoalExplain that all living things need energy and that animals get their energy from food.
New words
energy · what living things need to move, grow and stay alivefood chain · a line that shows who eats whom, and how energy passes alongfood web · many food chains joined together
Explanation
Every living thing needs energy to move, to grow and to stay warm. Animals get energy from food. A rock hyrax is a small furry animal that lives among rocks in places such as Sinai. It eats leaves and fruit, and sometimes insects. A large bird of prey may catch a hyrax. Now ask where the energy began. A leaf is part of a plant, and a plant makes its own food using light. So the energy in the bird’s meal passed from the plant to the hyrax and then to the bird. This line is a food chain. Most animals eat more than one food, so the chains join up into a food web. In this unit we will follow energy along such chains.
leaves of a plant→rock hyrax→large bird of prey
Worked examples
On a farm near Fayoum, a hare nibbles clover and a fox hunts the hare. The clover made its food, the hare ate the clover, and the fox ate the hare. The arrows show energy moving from the food to the eater.
Omar eats a flatbread sandwich with cheese. The bread comes from wheat, a plant. The cheese comes from milk, which comes from an animal that ate plants. So Omar’s energy comes from plants either way.
A camel walks across the desert and eats dry bushes. It needs energy to walk far. The bushes gave it that energy, and the bushes made it from light.
Class activity
Energy detective. With a grown-up, write what you ate yesterday. For each food, write whether it came from a plant, an animal, or both. Draw a short chain for one meal, with arrows from the food to you, like this: bean → me.
Practice
1
Name two things living things use energy for.
Any two: moving, growing, keeping warm, staying alive.
2
What goes in the empty box? Name an animal that eats grass and is eaten by a fox.
A hare (a mouse or a rabbit also fits).
3
True or false: a plant gets its energy by eating small animals.
False. A plant makes its own food using light, water and air.
4
A hyrax eats a leaf. Where did the energy in the leaf come from?
From the Sun: the plant used light to make its food.
