Predator-Prey

Predator-Prey

Open Ended

What do you know about predator-prey interactions?

Multiple Choice

An organism that is killed and eaten by another organism

• Predator
• Prey
• Competition
• Adaptation

Multiple Choice

Barn owls hunt shrews. In this example what is a barn owl?

• Herbivore/Predator
• Carnivore/Prey
• Carnivore/Predator

Multiple Choice

Which of the following would be considered to be prey?

• an animal that has to hunt for its food
• an animal that is eaten by another animal
• an organism that makes it own food
• an organism that feeds on the blood of another animal

Multiple Choice

A consumer that hunts is called:

• a producer.
• an omnivore.
• a predator.
• a herbivore.

Multiple Choice

How do consumers get their energy? 

• laying in the sun
• eating other organisms 
• providing food for other organisms
• surviving in an ecosystem 

​Predator-Prey Relationships

​In Nature's plan, there is no such thing as a good or bad animal. There are only those animals that kill to eat (predators) and those that are killed and eaten (prey). It is unfair for us to judge their natural survival actions by our own ideas of what is good and bad or to decide that all predators are villains.

​

When the coyote chases, catches, kills, and eats the cute, furry rabbit, it is not being intentionally cruel. It is only meeting its physical need for food with whatever is available at the time. Its meal could just as easily have been a mouse, rat, or other small creature ....

Multiple Choice

If a hawk eats a snake, the snake is the...

• Predator
• Alpha
• Prey
• Mutualistic partner

Multiple Choice

What role does the mouse play?

• Predator
• Prey

Multiple Choice

Which of the following is a herbivore?

• cricket
• frog
• hawk
• shrew

Multiple Choice

How many carnivores are shown in this food web?

• 6
• 4
• 5
• 3

​People usually think of predators as meat-eating mammals (carnivores), but the bird, reptile, amphibian, fish, and insect families also have their predators. Eagles, hawks, falcons, and owls are probably the best-known predators of the bird world. Everyone knows how one of them can swoop down, catch and kill a small creature, and then use a sharp-edged, hooked beak to tear bite-sized pieces of flesh from the animal.

Multiple Choice

A frog eats a fly. The frog and fly are demonstrating ________.

• mutualism
• competition
• predator/prey
• parasitism

​Sharks are probably the most feared predators of the sea, but are their eating habits, although vicious, any more predatory than those of the freshwater bass? From the time it is large enough to eat some of its own brothers and sisters to the time it can swallow a frog or baby duck swimming on the water's surface, the black bass spends its time searching its watery world for things to eat. If it weren't for its predatory habits, we wouldn't be able to catch the bass with all the different kinds of baits and lures we use.

Multiple Choice

Predator

Multiple Choice

Prey

​When a spider is sitting in its web waiting for its insect meal, it is the predator. However, if a lizard's tongue darts out and catches the spider, the spider becomes the lizar's prey. The predatory lizard may then be swallowed by a roadrunner, which may later be caught and eaten by a coyote. The wandering coyote may fall victim to the greatest predator of all, man.

Multiple Choice

Definition of Prey

• animal that is hunted for as food

• animal that hunts organisms for food

Multiple Choice

Definition of Predator

• animal that is hunted for as food

• animal that hunts other animals for food

​Predation is one of the ways nature keeps animal populations under control. Great swarms of insects would soon cover the earth, creating a threat to all living things, if it weren't for the spiders, frogs, fish, lizards, snakes, birds, and mammals that eat them. Plant-eating animals, such as mice, rats, and rabbits, would soon strip the land bare without the controlling effect of predators. Areas where large predators have been reduced through trapping, shooting, and other predator-control methods often develop large populations of mice, rats, and rabbits that can destroy the plants needed by other wildlife species for both food and shelter. If the predators had been allowed to remain, the prey species probably would have been kept under control.

Multiple Choice

Select the best symbiotic relationship that these two organisms would express

• mutualism

• commensalism

• parasitism

Multiple Choice

Select the best symbiotic relationship that these two organisms would express

• mutualism

• commensalism

• parasitism

Multiple Choice

Select the best symbiotic relationship that these two organisms would express

• mutualism

• commensalism

• parasitism

​Predator-Prey Line Graph

• ​Technically, a predator-prey relationship is a type of symbiosis. ​

• Symbiosis is any type of interaction between two different species of living things in the same environment. A predator-prey relationship is between two animal species —one kills and eats the other.

• ​What do you notice about the predator-prey graph?

Open Ended

What do you notice about how the predator and prey populations influence each other?