Adaptations, Habitats, Biomes

Essential Questions

Read through the following presentation with your group and teacher. See if you can answer these questions by the end

What is an adaptation?

What is the difference between physical and behavioral adaptations?

What is a biome? What are the major biomes?

What kinds of animals belong to each biome?

How do biomes affect animal adaptations?

How to animal adaptations change over time?

What is an adaptation?

How a person or animal changes or “adapts” to survive.

We change how we dress. When the weather gets cold we wear coats and long pants. Similar to this animals must adapt to changes in their surroundings.

What do all animals need?

Air (oxygen), water, shelter, food

What animals do or how they behave to get these needs is called an adaptation.

Physical and Behavioral Animals adapt in many ways. There are two types of adaptations. Physical and

Behavioral.

Physical is how an animal looks. It is it’s physical features such as beaks, tails, claws, and much more. A skunk has a physical adaptation that protects it from harm. Do you know what it is?

Behavioral is how an animal behaves. If your teacher says you had great behavior, he or she means you acted very well.

Behavioral Adaptations are how an animal acts to help it survive in its’ habitat. There are two types of Behavioral Adaptations

Taught and Instinctive.

Taught is something like talking to humans. Someone had to teach you how to talk. Instinctive is like a baby crying. Babies know how to do it from birth. It does not have to be taught.

We will explore some examples of physical and behavioral adaptations now.

Physical Adaptations

Physical adaptations may be how many fingers an animal has, how thick its fur it, or how it changes to attract a mate.

Physical adaptations do not form overnight. They can take hundreds of years to transform and usually change because of the climate.

With today’s constantly changing environment, animals habitats or living places are changing.

An animal has to readjust to that new surrounding or climate. If they can’t the animal dies.

You will learn more about how climate changes and then with time it forces animals to change and adapt later in this lesson.

Adaptations- Physical

Mimicry The Viceroy Butterfly mimics the Monarch. The Monarch is poisonous and birds know not to eat it. The Viceroy is not poisonous but because it looks similar, many animals will not eat it. What other animals use mimicry?

Camouflage The chameleon’s light brown coloring keeps it safe from harm. It matches the trees and brush it lives in so predators cannot see it. The chameleon only changes color when in immediate danger. What other animals use camouflage?

Adaptations- Physical

Defense

Bombardier beetle- a beetle that has a special defense feature. It mixes two chemicals in its body and shoots the chemicals mixed in its body from its abdomen at predators for

protection.

The skunk uses a special musk to spray when it feels it is facing danger.

Behavioral Adaptations

Migration This is when animals move from one place to another in search of food or to find a warmer place to

live.

Hibernation/Estivation When an animal goes in a dormant or inactive state to avoid extremely cold weather conditions. Brown bears hibernate in the winter. Estivation is the same as hibernation but is done by animals trying to avoid very hot conditions.

Behavioral Adaptation- Caring for an animals’ young

Crèche Crèche is the term used for how a mother duck leads her ducklings as she searches for food. In a crèche one female leads the group of ducklings and the other trails in the back guarding them from danger. This can be considered an adaptation used to care for the young.

Spiders have many spider eggs at one time; therefore they cannot all live in the same area. As a special adaptation and means of survival young spiders find a pace to live by ballooning. They raise their abdomen or rear, spin a long strand of silk and let the breeze carry them to a new home.

Adaptations are everywhere!

There are many more types of adaptations both physical and behavioral. What other kinds of adaptations of animals do you know?

You will use the following WebQuest to find even more adaptations!

Now it’s time to learn about where these animals live and how that affects their adaptations.

BiomesThere are six major types of biomes where all

animals could live and “adapt” to in order to survive.

Freshwater -Includes wetlands, streams and rivers, ponds and lakes. Animals that live here require low salt intake. Temperature of the water changes drastically with the seasons.

(fish such as catfish, shrimp. ducks, turtles, snakes, birds)

Marine – Cover about 75% of Earth’s surface. Marine includes oceans, estuaries, and coral reef. High salt concentrations.

(mammals such as dolphins and whales, crabs, worms, octopuses)

Desert –Cover about 20% of Earth’s surface. Few animals live in very hot deserts because the desert offers little protections from the hot sun. Semi-arid, coastal, coastal, and cold deserts contain more animals.

(rabbits, skunks, owls, snakes, jack rabbits, mice, coyotes, and badgers)

Biomes- ContinuedForest (Taiga)- There are three types. tropical, temperate, and boreal. Tropical-near equator(birds, bats, small mammals.)

Temperate-eastern North America, northeastern Asia, and western and central Europe (squirrels, rabbits, skunks, birds, deer, mountain lion, bobcat, timber wolf, fox, and black bear.)

Boreal-short, moist summers, long cold winters(hawks, small mammals, bats, lynx, bears)

Grassland– Two types savannah and temperate (includes prairies). Africa, India, South America.

(Savannah-giraffes, zebras, buffaloes, kangaroos, mice, moles, gophers, ground squirrels, snakes, worms, termites, beetles, lions, leopards, hyenas, and elephants.)

(Temperate- gazelles, zebras, rhinoceroses, wild horses, lions, wolves, prairie dogs, jack rabbits, deer, mice, coyotes, foxes, skunks, badgers, blackbirds, quails, sparrows, hawks, owls, snakes, grasshoppers, and spiders)

How did you do?

What is an adaptation?

What is the difference between physical and behavioral adaptations?

What is a biome? What are the major biomes?

What kinds of animals belong to each biome?

How do biomes affect animal adaptations?

How to animal adaptations change over time?

Animal Adaptations

Types of Adaptation Anything that helps an organism survive in

its environment is an adaptation.  It also refers to the ability of living things to

adjust to different conditions within their environments. 

› Structural adaptation › Protective coloration› Mimicry › Behaviour adaptations› Migration› Hibernation

Structural adaptations

A structural adaptation involves some part of an animal's body.

› Teeth › Body coverings    › Movement

Protective Coloration

Coloration and protective resemblance allow an animal to blend into its environment. 

Another word for this might be camouflage.  Their camouflage makes it hard for enemies to single out individuals.  

Mimicry Mimicry allows one

animal to look, sound, or act like another animal to fool predators into thinking it is poisonous or dangerous.  

Behaviour adaptations

Behaviour adaptations include activities that help an animal survive. 

Behaviour adaptations can be learned or instinctive.

› Social behaviour   › Behaviour for protection  

Migration Animals migrate for

different reasons. 

› better climate › better food › safe place to live › safe place to raise young › go back to the place

they were born.

This is when behavioral adaptation that involves an animal or group of animals moving from one region to another and then back again. 

Hibernation This is deep sleep in which animal’s body temp

droops, body activities are slowed to conserve energy.

E.g. Bats, woodchucks & bears.

Made by Abhishek Rawat(1)

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