Oct 2, 20219 min read

Animal Adaptations for Kids

Our first science unit this year is Growth and Change in Animals, and we spent part of this time learning all about animal adaptations. Adaptations can be physiological, structural or behavioural. The boys really enjoyed studying some of the cool ways that different animals have adapted to survive in their environment, from glowing eyes, to star-shaped noses, poisonous skin and iron teeth! We spent time doing plenty of fun experiments to see first hand how some of these adaptations help animals, as well as watching educational YouTube videos, and reading library books. Here are some of our favourite activities, videos and books from this unit.

Why Do Cat’s Eyes Shine in the Dark?

Ever wondered why cat’s eyes glow in the dark ? 🐈‍

Animals who do most of their hunting at night or at dusk and twilight need to have good night vision. Cats have much better night vision than humans because of the structure of their eyes, including a layer of reflective cells at the back of the eye called the tapetum lucidum. This layer reflects light back into the retina, giving the retina a second chance to absorb this additional light and giving off that reflective glow that we see.

To visualize this, we did a quick experiment using tin foil to represent the reflective tapetum lucidum. We made two of these “cat eyes” and held them together with an elastic band to represent two eyes.

MATERIALS:

Empty tin cans

Elastic bands

Black plastic bag

Black construction paper

Tape

Tin foil

Scissors

Trace the bottom of the can onto a piece of black paper and a piece of tin foil. Cut out each of these circles.
Tape the circle of black paper to the bottom of the inside of your can.
Cut an oval slit into a piece of black plastic and secure it over the opening of the tin can using an elastic band.
Go into a dark room and shine a flashlight at the “cat eye”. Does it shine?
Now tape the piece of tin foil to the bottom of the inside of the can. Secure the black plastic back over the top. Go into a dark room again and shine the flashlight at the “cat eye”. What happens this time?

Learn more about why cat's eyes shine here:

Why Do Some Animals Have Blubber?

This simple experiment demonstrates how blubber helps to keep many marine mammals such as whales, walruses, seals, sea otters, penguins and even polar bears warm.

Blubber is a thick layer of fat under an animal’s skin that works to insulate them for warmth, stores energy and increases buoyancy. Warm-blooded marine animals need to maintain their body temperature in the icy water that makes up their habitat. Keeping warm uses a lot of energy, and sometimes food can be scarce in cold habitats, so blubber is an important source of energy stores.

MATERIALS:

2 plastic sandwich bags

Lard or shortening

Spoon

Large bowl or container

Ice cubes

Cold water

Make a “blubber glove” by partially filling a sandwich bag with lard or shortening. Take a second sandwich bag and place it over your hand. Place your bagged hand inside the bag of lard so that your bagged hand is surrounded by a fairly even coat of lard.
Fill a bowl with ice and cold water.
First place one of your bare hands into the cold water. How does it feel?
Take your other hand, place it into the “blubber glove”, and carefully place it into the water. Try not to let water into the bag. How does it feel? Compare how your two hands feel in the ice water.

Learn more about how blubber keeps some mammals warm below:

Exploring Bird Beaks

Check out this easy activity for exploring bird beaks and why they come in different shapes and sizes! 🐦

You can get a pretty good idea of what a bird eats by looking at the shape of its beak. Different beaks are adapted to be suited for digging deep into the ground, shelling seeds, peeling fruit, drinking nectar, catching fish, straining food from the water, or tearing apart meat.

To explore how different shapes work better for picking up different types of food, we laid out a variety of tools to use as our “beaks” and several different items to pick up of varying shapes and sizes. We made this a snack and stuck with food items like cooked noodles, berries, Cheerios, Rice Krispies, and nuts. For beaks the kids experimented with tweezers, clothespins, several different tongs, scoops, spoons and forks. In the end, it was easy to see that certain “beaks” picked up certain foods more easily than others.

For more information about bird feeding adaptations, check out this video:

How Do Birds Stay Dry?

Ever wondered how birds stay dry and toasty warm? Or why they spend so much time with their beaks in their feathers?

We spent a bit of time learning about why birds “preen” their feathers. Preening is a common behaviour found in birds, done several times per day, to groom feathers. It involves using the beak to clean and reposition feathers, as well as interlocking the barbs on feathers to optimize water proofing and an aerodynamic shape.

Just above the tail feathers is a “preen gland” that also plays an important role

in preening. This gland produces an oily, waxy substance that helps to waterproof feathers and maintain their flexibility. During preening, birds rub this oil over all of their feathers with their beaks.

We took a look at how this oil waterproofs feathers with a simple experiment.

MATERIALS:

Vegetable oil

Water

Eye dropper

Paint brush or basting brush

Paper

Scissors

Plate or tray

Fold a piece of paper or card stock in half. Cut the paper into a feather shape so that you have two matching paper feathers.
Place the two feathers onto a plate or tray. Use your brush to gently brush a thin layer of vegetable oil onto one of the feathers.
Drop some water onto each feather using your eye dropper. What do you notice? You should see the water bead on top of the oiled feather and water soaking into the other feather.
Pour a few drops of oil into a glass of water. What do you notice? You will observe that the water and oil do not mix. The oil from the preen gland on a bird acts as a natural repellent to water and is one adaptation that birds have to keep them dry and warm.

To learn more about bird feathers and preening, check out this video:

Why Do Some Animals Have Webbed Feet?

A common adaptation in animals living in or around water is webbed feet. Webbed feet help animals such as swans, ducks, geese, frogs, beavers, otters, and many more species to thrive in their environment. The webbing between their toes allows these animals to push their feet against a greater area of water to swim with greater speed and force, helping them to catch prey, or escape predators. The webbing also gives greater area to the feet to be able to walk with ease on muddy surfaces.

This simple experiment can show you how!

MATERIALS:

Plastic sandwich bag

Elastic band

Water

Large container or sink

Put your right hand into an empty sandwich bag and tie and elastic band around your wrist to create a seal.
Put your left hand into a large container or sink filled with water, spread your fingers wide open and move your hand in the water.
Now try the same with your right hand with your fingers spread wide open in the bag. Do you feel a difference?

The kids enjoyed this fun book about different animal foot adaptations. It’s called “What If You Had Animal Feet?”

How Do Larger Feet Help in the Snow?

Why do many animals living in arctic and snowy habitats have large feet?

Many Canadian animals have adaptations to survive in their cold and snowy habitats. Some change colour, some have extra coats of fur or a special layer of fat called blubber. The snowshoe hare, caribou, ptarmigan, lynx and others have large feet to help them to move more easily atop deep snow, dispersing their weight much like show shoes.

This simple experiment demonstrates the benefit of larger feet.

MATERIALS:

Plastic animal (medium to large)

Flour

Dish or tray

Cardboard

Tape

Scissors

Put a layer about 3/4 inch thick of flour in a shallow dish or tray.
Shake your tray a bit to loosen up your flour and so it spreads into an even layer. Make your predictions! Then set your animal gently onto the flour and remove it. Observe the footprints left by your animal.
Cut out “snow shoe” feet for your animal and tape them onto the bottom of your plastic animal’s feet.
Set your animal into the flour gently once again and observe its new footprints. Are they as deep as the first set of prints?

Predator VS Prey Eyes

Ever noticed how different animal eyes can be? They can be different colours, have different shapes, slanted, round or horizontal pupils, and more. Some eyes, like the eyes of a chameleon, even move independently! We have taken a look at why some animal eyes appear to glow - and here we will take a deeper look at why some animal eyes are positioned on the sides or the front of the head. These adaptations in eye position help improve each animal’s chance of survival.

Most predator’s eyes are forward facing whereas most prey have eyes on the sides of the head. The position of the eyes affects the range of vision. Eyes on the side of the head have a much wider range of vision, allowing them to have a better chance of seeing predators approaching. Forward facing eyes give predators better depth perception and allows them to better focus on their prey during a hunt.

MATERIALS: Card stock or greeting card Tin foil Tape Scissors

Fold a piece of card stock in half like a greeting card and then unfold and lay flat.
Cut a piece of tin foil about the same size and lay it flat over the card stock. Try your best to keep it smooth.
Fold the excess tin foil over the sides of the card stock and tape it to the card.
Fold the card back in half. Hold the folded edge up to your nose with the card open at about a 90 degree angle. Have someone behind you move and wave their arms. Can you see their reflection in the foil? Have them try different positions to get an idea of your range of vision.
Next try the same without the help of the tin foil card. How does your normal range of vision compare?

The Story of Peppered Moths

The Peppered Moth is a classic example of an animal adapting to its environment through natural selection. The majority of Peppered Moths were originally white and speckled with black, giving it its name. Their colouring allowed them to blend well with the bark on birch trees coated with lichen in their habitat - camouflaging them from their predators, birds. Black coloured Peppered Moths at this time were rare.

During the Industrial Revolution in England, the pollution from factories running on coal created a layer of dark soot on everything, including the birch trees. The lichen that used to coat these trees and provide camouflage to the moths could not survive. Scientists started to observe over time that the once rare black Peppered Moths became much more common than the white ones. This was because the black moths were now camouflaged from hungry birds on the sooty trees while the white moths were visible to predators and were eaten. The once rare trait became predominant due to natural selection.

When the trees were no longer darkened by pollution decades later, the population of Peppered Moths became predominantly white with black specks once again as they were the ones now camouflaged from predators. This is one of the clearest examples of Darwinian evolution to date. You can see this in action with the help of a simulation game available to try online:

https://askabiologist.asu.edu/activities/peppered-moth

Learn more about the Peppered Moth in this video:

Our Favourite Books About Animal Adaptations

It wasn’t hard to find a huge selection of fun books all about animal adaptations geared to preschool to primary ages kiddos! We found plenty at our local library. Here are our favourites.

Creature Features, by Steve Jenkins & Robin Page

In this fun book, 25 animals explain their adaptations to the reader. This book is filled with facts and my boys loved the idea of learning first hand from the animals themselves about some of their features. Lots of the explanations were also filled with humour which always adds to the fun.

Actual Size, by Steve Jenkins

This book is a great introduction to the diversity found in animals big and small. As the title implies, the illustrations within the book are all the actual size of the animals which my boys thought was pretty neat!

What If You Had an Animal Nose? by Sandra Markle

What if one day you woke up and had an elephant nose? We read all the books we could get our hands on from this super fun series! Each book focuses on a particular trait that varies in different animal species, and how your life would change if you had that adaptation, too. This series is a perfect way to learn about different adaptations for your little learners!

Winter's Coming: A Story of Seasonal Change, by Jan Thornhill

Lily is a young snowshoe hare who is about to experience her first Winter. She keeps hearing the other animals tell her that "Winter's coming", but she isn't sure who or what Winter is. Follow along as Lily learns how other animals prepare for Winter's arrival, and watch through the illustrations as she gets ready too.

Over and Under the Snow, by Kate Messner

Follow along through these beautiful illustrations as a family enjoys gliding along the snow, and see what's just below them in the subnivean zone. See how many animals spend their Winter keeping warm and toasty under the blanket of snow.

When Butterflies Cross the Sky: The Monarch Butterfly Migration

This book follows the journey in detail of a monarch butterfly as she migrates to Mexico in a narrative style story. There are also plenty of "fast facts" included to learn more about this amazing annual journey.