Who Eats Whom in a Pond

Lab Brief #9

🎯 Your mission

Learn the rule. Then catch nature using it.

⚡ The twist

What the body does in one minute is wilder than any cartoon.

What you'll learn

A pond has plants that make their own food, small creatures that eat the plants, and bigger animals that eat those. Draw arrows from what is eaten to what eats it and you have made a food chain.

Key words

food chain
A line of arrows showing who eats whom, starting with a plant.
pond
A small body of still water where many plants and animals live together.

Make a hypothesis first

Guess: how does the body solve this problem?

Say your guess out loud — then find out if you were right.

Step 1 of 4 · Read

Think about what you just learned: say what "food chain" and "pond" mean in your own words before you start.

Step 2 of 4 · Do

Draw a pond food chain with four links: pondweed, water snail, small fish, heron. Point every arrow towards the animal that does the eating, then say out loud what would happen if the pondweed died.

Step 3 of 4 · Observe

Record what actually happened, including anything that did not match what you expected.

Step 4 of 4 · Record

Write a conclusion that answers the question this lesson opened with, and state your uncertainty.

Question 1 of 2

In a food chain the arrow points:

How sure are you?😐 maybe

Question 2 of 2

What is at the start of almost every food chain?

How sure are you?😐 maybe

Mind = blown

🦠 You have more bacterial cells in your body than human cells.

Nice work!

You got 0 of 2 right.

Next: Every Living Thing Needs a Home All lessons

🎯

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✨ More to explore

🌍 Where you see this in real life: Your own body is doing this thousands of times every second.

🏆 Stretch challenge (try it this week): Find one thing about your body that's different from a friend's. Wonder why.

👨‍👩‍👧 For the dinner table: “Tell me something you noticed about your own body today.”

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Who Eats Whom in a Pond

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