Food Chains

Learn about food chains and where tadpoles sit in them!


What are Food Chains?

Food chains are a way of showing how animals are connected to each other by what they eat. They also show the flow of energy within a certain environment. Food chains arrange plants and animals in an order of who eats who.

Let’s start at the very beginning of the food chain.

Plants take in carbon dioxide from the air and absorb sunlight. Through a process called photosynthesis, they use these to produce organic matter.

Some animals get their energy from plants (herbivores) and some from eating other animals (carnivores). Others eat a mix of both plants and animals (omnivores).

In many food chains animals get bigger the higher you go up the food chain. While many smaller animals feed on plants, larger animals tend to feed on the smaller animals and finally a top predator feeds on those animals. There are exceptions though, for example humans eat cows even though they are bigger than us!

Organisms in a food chain can be divided into two categories. Producers produce organic matter and their own food. Consumers consume the food that producers make, or they eat other consumers!


Levels in a Food Chain

There are different levels of consumers in a food chain. The animal that eats the plant is called a primary consumer. A secondary consumer eats the primary consumers and a tertiary consumer feeds on the secondary consumer.

Here is an example of a pond life food chain, including young tadpoles. At this stage in their life, they are primary consumers.

The arrows show who eats who in this habitat. Firstly, tadpoles eat algae, which are the producers in this food chain. The tadpoles are eaten by newts, which are in turn eaten by larger birds such as this heron. See how the tadpoles, newts and birds are consumers, but at different levels.

The tadpoles are primary consumers, as they eat the producer.


Food Webs

Often the connections between animals are more complicated than a simple food chain, because some animals eat more than one thing. We call these food webs, and an example of a pond food web can be seen below.

As you can see, lots of animals like to eat tadpoles and the bird eats most animals! In this case, the heron is the top predator. You can read more about tadpole predators here and what tadpoles like to eat here.


Quiz Time!

Results

We hope you now know more about food chains and how tadpoles fit into them! Click here to explore more topics.

 

#1. What is the name of the process where plants create organic matter from sunlight and carbon dioxide?

#2. What do food chains show? Select all that apply.

Select all that apply:

#3. Fill in the blank: "Young tadpoles can be classified as a ____ in a pond life food chain".

#4. Why are the connections between plants and animals in real life more complex that simple food chains?

Finish

Want More on Food Chains?

Follow the links below to learn about more food chains!

Bitesize Website talking about food chains at a Key Stage 2 level.
A video about food chains made by Crash Course Kids

Remember to attribute photographs, videos or work where appropriate! This is not needed unless used online, but if you’re unsure please refer to the creative commons licence rules. For media credits for the images above, please refer to the next page.

The Digestive System


 

The digestive system is modified to account for the change of the herbivorous diet of the tadpole to the carnivorous diet of the frog.

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The Skin


 

The skin adapts for the change from a purely aquatic lifestyle to an amphibious lifestyle.

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The Reproductive System


 

The urogenital system develops to allow for reproduction in adulthood.

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The Skeleton


 

The skeletal structure develops to accommodate the change from tail swimming to using legs to move around. The skull also needs to be remodelled for a frog's change in vision.

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The Nervous System


 

A tadpole sees from eyes that are positioned on opposite sides of the head. During metamorphosis, the optical nerves develop to accommodate a frog's binocular vision, where the eyes are positioned at the front of the head.

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1. Mating and Laying Spawn


 

Male and female frogs go to ponds in the winter. They mate in the spring, and the female lays big clumps of eggs.

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2. Frog Spawn


 

Frogs eggs are called frogspawn. Each round black egg is about 1 mm wide and is surrounded by a blob of jelly. Other animals produce spawn as well, which you can look at here.

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3. Maturing Frog Spawn


 

After a few days, the eggs begin to grow into tiny tadpoles inside the jelly.

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4. Hatchlings


 

Then the tadpoles hatch! They are about 5 mm long and they can’t swim (yet). They can bend their body from side to side using special muscles along their trunks and tails.

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5. Young Tadpoles


 

When their tail is big enough, they swim off into the pond to start to feed. At first they have gills (the pale protrusions from the head region in the left photo) so they can breath underwater like fish. Young tadpoles feed by grazing the surface of pond weeds and also eating tiny floating plants called algae.

Click here to play a tadpole feeding game called Taddypole!

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6. Maturing Tadpoles


 

Later they develop lungs and can swim up to the surface of the water to breath. The gills are absorbed back into their bodies and eyes develop. Older tadpoles are then able to feed on small animals like young insects.

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7. Mature Tadpoles


The next stage in development is to grow back legs. Tadpoles during this stage need to eat meat in order to get the proper nutrients to grow.

If you are looking after tadpoles, be careful as they can eat each other if you don't give them meat to eat! Click here to learn more about how to look after tadpoles as pets.

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8. Froglet


Finally, tadpoles grow front legs and their tail shrinks until it almost disappears. This is when they climb out of the pond and start living on dry land. Small frogs are commonly called froglets.

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9. Adult Frog


The little froglets will stay by the pond and slowly grow over the summer, eating small insects and worms. They will hibernate just like other adult frogs in damp spots near ponds from autumn until the next spring.

After four years, the new frogs will become adults and will be ready to mate and begin the cycle again.

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Copy - 9. Adult Frog


The little froglets will stay by the pond and slowly grow over the summer, eating small insects and worms. They will hibernate just like other adult frogs in damp spots near ponds from autumn until the next spring.

After four years, the new frogs will become adults and will be ready to mate and begin the cycle again.

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Desert Habitats


Desert habitats are the driest habitats in the world. Most people only think of very hot habitats as being deserts, but cold habitats can be deserts as well! Animals and plants that live in deserts have the ability to survive on very little water and animals can control their body temperatures so they stay at the right level.

 Some examples of plants and animals that live in deserts are cacti, the desert tortoise and the artic fox.

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Coral Reef Habitats


Coral reefs are found in warm tropical oceans all around the world. Coral reefs can be found in both shallow and deep water and take hundreds of thousands of years to grow! They provide food and shelter to many fish and other animals, making them habitats that are home to so many different types of life.

Some examples of plants and animals that live in coral reefs are the sea star, sea grass, the octopus and clown fish.

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Rainforest Habitats


Unlike deserts, rainforests are very damp habitats that are filled with lush plant and animal life. Rainforests have an average rainfall of 2,000 to 10,000 millimetres a year! That can be 10 times more rain that falls in the UK! Animals and plants that live in rainforests are used to the wet and humid environment and are able to compete with all the different animals and plants around them.

Some examples of plants and animals that live in rainforests are orchids, the poison dart frog and the hummingbird.

 

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Pollution of Habitats


Pollution is the contamination of habitats with harmful substances. These harmful substances can be anything from plastics, to fertilisers used in fields, to waste products from manufacturing factories.

As humans continue to reproduce and the global population grows, we continue to produce a larger and larger amount of waste and pollution. This affects all air, land and water-based habitats and threatens the health and survival of the plants and animals that live in them, including humans!

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Land Use


As the human population gets larger, we require more land to live on. More houses and schools and everything else we need to live must be built and more resources need to be found. As we expand our towns and cities, this takes away space and resources from other animals and plants.

In order to build more buildings for humans, land must be cleared, which greatly reduces its biodiversity. This means that the range of animals and plants in the land gets smaller, which can harm the food chains in the habitat.

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Deforestation


Deforestation is an example of harmful land use by humans. Trees are an important part of the carbon cycle and they help to clean the air and produce oxygen. With a growing human population, we have started clearing larger and larger areas of trees and forests to build on the land or to obtain wood.

This reduces the biodiversity the the habitats and sometimes destroys habitats completely.

 

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