Lesson 19: Plants vs Animals
Plants and animals obtain food energy in different ways. This lesson introduces photosynthesis, other groups of living things, and the role of sunlight in most familiar food webs.
Key Ideas
- Plants and animals are two groups of living things. Fungi, such as mushrooms, belong to another group.
- Animals get food from other living things or things they produce. Food supplies the energy and materials animals need.
- Most plants use light, water, and carbon dioxide to make sugars. Minerals from soil help plants grow, but they are not a plant’s food.
- Animals get energy from food. Most plants capture energy from sunlight and store some of it in sugars.
- Most food webs we know begin with energy from sunlight. Some begin with microbes that use energy from chemicals.
Vocabulary
- Organism: One living thing, such as a tree, a cat, or a mushroom.
- Photosynthesis: The process plants and some other living things use to make food with light energy.
- Producer: A living thing that makes its own food, usually using sunlight.
- Consumer: A living thing that gets food by eating other living things or things they produce.
Discussion Questions
- What is the biggest difference between how animals and plants get food?
- How do structures such as mouths, eyes, and legs help many animals obtain food? Why should we use several clues rather than one feature to identify a plant or animal?
- If a plant doesn't move around looking for food, how does it get what it needs to survive?
- Can you think of an animal whose body is especially well-designed for finding or eating its food? What features help it?
- Most familiar food webs depend on photosynthetic producers. What would happen to those webs if the producers disappeared, and how do chemical-energy-based food webs differ?
- Where does a plant's energy ultimately come from? What does the plant do with that energy?
- A huge tree can weigh thousands of pounds. Where do you think most of that mass actually came from?
- If most of a tree's mass comes from carbon dioxide and water rather than soil, why do you think trees still need soil?
- Imagine you planted a tiny seed in a pot and, years later, it became a giant tree. Where did all that extra material come from?
- Which idea in this lesson would have been most surprising to you before learning it? Why?