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| Animal Adaptations
An adaptation is something about an animal that makes it possible for it to live in a particular place and in a particular way. It may be a physical adaptation, like the size or shape of the animal's body, or the way in which its body works. Or it may be the way the animal behaves. Each adaptation has been produced by evolution. As the environment changes, animals that cannot adapt die out, and only the adapted ones survive to produce babies. Because babies are usually more or less like their parents, the whole species soon contains only animals that are adapted to the new environment. An animal's environment consists of many different things. The climate is important. Whether it is hot, cold, dry, or wet will have an effect on all the creatures that live in a particular place. Another important part of an animal's environment is what kinds of food plants grow in it. The other animals that live there also have an effect. If there are predators around, the prey animals will have to learn to defend themselves or run fast to escape. These adaptations make it possible for a great variety of creatures to live and thrive on earth. animals adapt to the natural world. Animals in the wild can only live in places they are adapted to. They must have the right kind of habitat where they can find the food and space they need. Places To Go | People To See | Things To Do | Teacher Resources | Bibliography The following are places to go (some real and some virtual) to find out about animal adaptations. The Wildlife Conservation Society has a Kid's Page with a virtual zoo to visit. You can learn about the different ways that animals move, how they protect themselves from predators, and more.
Visit the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and go straight to their Discovery Room Online for animal explorations. Travel to Alaska's Cold Desert, the Arctic tundra. See how plants and animals adapt to this harsh climate. The life cycle of nose bot flies is perfectly adapted for existence where it's cold. Find out what wiley nose bot flies do to survive the cold winter. 
Ask-A-Zoologist your questions about animal adaptations. From this page, scroll down and choose zoology for the area of science pertaining to your question.
Visit with biologist Doug Siegel-Causey. He knows all about animals of the Arctic region. Learn about all the different folks it takes to successfully operate a zoo by these profiles of workers at the San Diego Zoo. By krykie, read more about Steve Irwin, the director of Australia Zoo in Queensland, Australia, and host of that wild series “The Crocodile Hunter”. Ask the National Wildlife Federation’s Ranger Rick all your animal questions.
Find out how animals adapt to desert conditions. The two main adaptations that desert animals must make are how to deal with lack of water and how to deal with extremes in temperature. Many desert animals avoid the heat of the desert by simply staying out of it as muchas possible. You probably know what nocturnal means. What does crepuscular mean?
Frogs are carnivores. They eat insects, spiders, worms, snails, fish, and even small rodents like mice. When a frog spots a tasty meal, it flicks out its long, sticky tongue. The tongue lassos the meal/creature and pulls it back into the frog's mouth. Even though frogs do have teeth, they are small and not really good for chewing. Frogs mostly use their teeth just to hold their prey in their mouths, and then they swallow their prey whole. Even then, sometimes it is difficult for a frog to stuff big prey down its throat. A frog's head has adaptations that help it to swallow prey. A human's eyes are fixed in our heads in bony circles called orbits. But the orbits surrounding a frog's eyes do not have bottoms. So when a frog swallows large prey, it can close its eyelids and drop its eyeballs down into its mouth. Then the eyeballs help push the prey down the throat of the frog. (Incredible as it may sound, this is true!) For more amazing animal adaptations, check out the book Exploding Ants : Amazing Facts About How Animals Adapt by Joanne Settel.
Animals need a constant source of food. Many animals adapt by moving to where the food is. They do not live in the same place all year round. In the winter, they migrate to a warmer place where there is more food. In the spring, they return to breed.The huge expanses of wilderness in Canada and Alaska are good habitats for moose and musk oxen. In summer herds of caribou migrate north from the forests to graze on the tundra. Wolves and bears follow the caribou to prey on their young. Learn more about animal migrations of all kinds from the Journey North/South website. How are the teeth, throat, stomach, and forepaws of giant pandas adapted to what they eat? How is the fur of giant pandas adapted for where they live? The World Wildlife Foundation knows all about pandas. How are large snakes such as pythons able to swallow prey that is bigger than their own heads? It's because their jaws are adapted to do so. The bones of their mouth are loosely joined to their skulls. A stretchy strip of tissue called a ligament holds together the two halves of the lower jaw. When the snakes swallow their prey, their mouths can stretch wide open. The lower jawbones spread apart and each bone moves separately to pull the prey into the mouth. Snakes usually swallow their prey headfirst which causes the prey's legs to fold back, making it more streamlined and easier to swallow. The teeth of most snakes also curve backward which prevents the prey wiggling out. As snakes work their food down their throats, their windpipes displace themselves which means that the snakes can keep breathing while they are swallowing.
Moles are among the best diggers in the animal world. Their bodies are made/adapted for digging! They actually have shovel-shaped hands and long nails, and their chest muscles are very strong to push dirt. Other burrowing animals such as prairie dogs, badgers, rabbits, and foxes, also use sharp claws and strong muscles for digging their homes. Check out this colony of moles with this MoleCam.
Animal
Puzzles Do your parents scold you when you crack your knuckles? If you were an elk, you'd crack your knuckles all the time and never get in trouble for it. Elk make slight cracking noises when they walk. Those noises are an adaptation that help them keep in touch with each other, especially when the herd spreads out in the thick brush. When elk hear knuckle-cracking, they know it's another elk nearby and not a predator lurking around.
The body of some animals is adapted perfectly for what they eat. A bobcat's favorite food is the snowshoe hare (in the northern U.S.) or the cottontail rabbit (in the eastern U.S.). A bobcat's canine teeth, the four long, sharp pointed teeth in the front of their mouths, are spaced just exactly far enough apart to separate the vertebrae of rabbits so that they can kill them with one bite. Animal
Scramble
Why did dinosaurs disappear? Was it because they were unable to adapt to the changing climate of the earth? Find out how beavers are adapted for underwater work. Send someone an electronic animal postcard from the San Diego Zoo.
Teacher Resources Online activities are a listing of internet sites with fun, interesting, and educational tasks attached to each one. (You can learn how to use this WWW Activities tool created by UEN for Utah educators).
Virtual Field Trips are teacher and student-created tours of curricular topics. (You can learn how to use this UEN Virtual Field Trip tool created by UEN for Utah educators). Lesson Plan/Webquests/Activities
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