Animal Adaptations

Body Parts

BeaksFinches have different kinds of beaks depending on

what they eat.

A house finch eats fruit – it has a short, stubby beak.

A European gold finch eats insects – it has a sharp, pointed beak.

Darwin’s finch eats seeds – it has a thick, heavy beak.

All birds have beaks that help them get food from their

environment.

Birds have the same basic needs but different adaptations

to help them meet their needs in different ways.

Feathers

• Keep birds warm and dry

• Very light• Give bodies a smooth

surface so air flows easily

Hollow Bones

• Bird’s bones are filled with air pockets

• This makes a bird especially light

Birds that don’t fly have adaptations for running

• An ostrich has long legs and two-toed feet• An ostrich runs at about 40 mph

Water Birds

• Penguins don’t fly or run• A penguin’s body has adaptations for moving in

water• A penguin uses its wings as flippers and feet for

steering

Body Coverings

Feathers

• Birds have feathers to protect them and help them to fly

Fur

• Mammals have fur or hair to keep them warm

Hair

• Dolphins and other marine mammals have little hair on their bodies.

• This helps them glide through the water easily.

Scales

• A reptile’s scales protect it from injury and from drying out

• A snake’s scales overlap to form a smooth covering that helps it to move

Color and Shape

Changing Fur Color

• A snowshoe hare is white in the winter and brown in the summer

• Changing fur color is an adaptation that makes hares difficult for animals to hunt

• The snowshoe hare blends in with its environment

Camouflage• When an animal’s color or pattern helps it

blend in with its surroundings, it is camouflaged

• Camouflage helps an animal hide

A tiger’s striped fur helps the tiger blend in with light and shadows of the tall grass

A toad’s bumpy, brownish skin looks like pebbles on the forest floor.

An alligator’s dark skin on it’s back makes it blend into the swamp.

Mimicry

• Mimicry is an adaptation in which an animal looks very much like another animal.

The viceroy butterfly looks like a monarch butterfly. Monarch butterflies taste bad to birds.

Behaviors

• Instinct

• Migration

• Hibernation

Instinct

• Monarch butterflies flying south for the winter in instinctive. This behavior is not something they have learned.

Migration

• Many birds migrate to where there is food and a good climate.

The pectoral sandpiper migrates from northern Canada to southern South America in the fall then back to Canada in the spring.

Migration

• Some migrate to places where their young can survive.

Gray whales spend the summer in areas where they find food easily near the North Pole. In winter they migrate to warm water off Mexico to give birth to their young.

• Pacific salmon migrate before producing their young

• Salmon hatch from eggs in rivers and streams

• Then they swim to the ocean• When they are ready to produce young of

their own, they migrate to the same stream where they hatched.

Hibernation

• Some animals don’t migrate. They adapt to changes by hibernating.

• An animal prepares to hibernate by eating extra food and finding shelter.

• During hibernation the animal’s body temperature drops and its breathing rate and heartbeat rate fall.

• As a result, the animal needs little or no food.

• The energy it does need comes from fat stored in its body.

Ground squirrel

North American bats

Learned Behaviors

• Some animal behaviors are not instincts. They are learned.

Tigers aren’t born knowing how to hunt. Tiger cubs learn to hunt by watching their mothers hunt and by playing with other tiger cubs.

Chimpanzees learn many behaviors that help them survive. Chimps use sounds to communicate with one another. Young chimps learn the meanings of the sounds by observing the adults in their environment.

Observation also helps a young chimp learn how to build a leafy nest for sleeping and how to use a stone to crack open a nut.

Metamorphosis

• Metamorphosis is the process of change

• Almost all insects, many invertebrates that live in water, and amphibians go through some kind of metamorphosis.

How Living Things Have Changed

Fossils

• Fossils are preserved evidence of how long-dead living things may have looked.

• Fossil evidence also can suggest how living things many have changed over time.

Elephants• Woolly mammoths lived during the Ice

Age.• Mammoths died out but another elephant-

like animal (Gomphotherium) was able to live.

• Scientists think today’s African elephant is related to it.

Woolly Mammoth Gomphotherium African Elephant

Footprints

• Fossil footprint and bones can show how an animal walked

• Some dinosaurs had four legs but the front legs were much shorter so the animal probably walked on only two legs.

Butterflies

• Butterflies lay hundreds of eggs

• The eggs hatch into wormlike larvae called caterpillars.

• As a caterpillar grows, it molts (sheds its outer skin) several times.

• The last time a caterpillar molts, it seals itself inside a tough shell called a chrysalis.

• Inside the chrysalis the caterpillar’s body slowly changes.

• Finally an adult butterfly breaks out of the chrysalis.