Habitats & Basic Needs
Identify that most living things live in habitats to which they are suited and describe how habitats provide for basic needs and how organisms depend on each other
What a learner can do afterwards
- Define a habitat as a place where an organism lives that provides what it needs
- Give examples of how specific habitats meet organisms' needs (e.g. pond provides water and food for frogs)
- Describe at least one way organisms in a habitat depend on each other (e.g. bees pollinate flowers, flowers feed bees)
1 · Read
If you find a wiggly caterpillar, you need to know where it can live and grow. A habitat is the place where a living thing makes its home. A good habitat gives it food, water, air, and shelter. Habitats can be wet or dry, hot or cold, but each one fits the living things that call it home. A cactus fits desert, a frog fits pond.
A pond is a habitat for a frog. It gives the frog water to swim in, bugs to eat, and plants to hide under. A frog could not get any of that in a dry desert.
A polar bear lives at the icy North Pole, not in a hot desert. Its thick white fur and layer of fat keep it warm and help it hide on snow while it hunts seals. In a desert there is no ice to hunt from, and that same fur would make the bear far too hot.
Living things in a habitat often help each other too. A bee visits a flower to drink its sweet nectar. As the bee moves, yellow pollen sticks to its legs and rubs off on the next flower, which helps that flower make seeds. The bee gets food, and the flower gets help growing.
When you look at any habitat, ask two questions: what does it give the living things there, and how do those living things help each other back?
A habitat gives living things what they need, and the living things in it often help each other too.
The rewritten reading was written for this dataset.
More to read
A place that meets a frog's needs
A plant or animal's home is its habitat. Living things need food, water, air and shelter there.
Many frogs live near ponds or in damp places with shade. They eat flies and other bugs. Moisture keeps their skin wet. Rocks and plants give them hiding places.
Meeting these needs can make a place suitable for a frog, though it may not stay. Whether a habitat is a small puddle or a huge forest, it needs to support the living things found there.
Unit 3: What's in YOUR watershed?
Rain falls on your town and flows into streams. The land around those streams is a habitat for many living things. Fish swim in the water. Birds nest in the trees on the banks. Deer come to drink.
Each part of the stream meets a need. The water gives fish air and food. The trees give birds wood for nests and shade that keeps the water cool. The plants on the banks give rabbits hiding spots. When we keep streams clean, all these neighbors keep the homes they need.
Ecological interactions
Living things in one habitat need each other. Bees visit flowers to drink sweet nectar. As they fly from bloom to bloom, pollen sticks to their fuzzy bodies and rubs off on the next flower. That helps the flower make seeds.
Birds need trees, and trees need birds too. A bird eats berries and later drops the seeds far away, where new bushes can grow. Frogs eat flies, and herons eat frogs. Every eater and every plant is tied to the others. A habitat is not just a place. It is a team of living things helping each other live.
Explore more
2 · Watch
En anglaisTake it off screen
Where it sits
Optional connections
Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
24 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.