Who Eats What? Food Chains

🌿 Imagine a caterpillar munching a leaf. Then a robin swoops down and eats the caterpillar! Who eats what? This is called a food chain. Today we find out how energy travels from plants all the way to hungry animals.

Because plants make food from sunlight, we call them producers. They produce, or make, the food energy that all other living things need. Animals cannot make their own food, so they must eat plants or other animals.

When an animal eats a plant or another animal, it gets energy. An animal that gets eaten is called the prey 🐛. The animal that does the eating is called the predator 🐦. A robin is the predator. The caterpillar is its prey.

We write a food chain using arrows. The arrow means gives energy to. Here is a garden food chain: grass ➡️ rabbit ➡️ fox. The grass is the producer. The rabbit is prey. The fox is the predator.

Well done! You now know that food chains start with a producer. Energy passes from prey to predator. Every living thing in a habitat depends on the others. You are a food chain expert! 🏆