How animals affect their surroundings
Animals in nature are linked to each other. A predator hunts its prey: the fox catches a hare, the frog catches a fly. Animals of one kind often compete for food and space. Sometimes both kinds benefit: a small shrimp cleans parasites off a big fish and gets food; helpful bacteria in the human gut aid digestion. A parasite lives at another creature’s expense and harms it: a flea lives on a dog. In a food chain each link eats the one before it and is eaten by the next, for example: plant → grasshopper → lizard → eagle. Every food chain starts with a plant, because only plants make food from sunlight. Ants, honeybees and termites live in colonies with a queen, workers and guards, and they “talk” with scent chemicals called pheromones.
“Living chain”: four or five pupils play a plant, a herbivore, a small predator and a big predator, each putting a hand on the one before. Then build another chain and discuss what happens if the plant is missing.