What is a Food Chain?

What did you have to eat today?

Did you have vegetables, fruit, cereal, fish, or meat?

All living things need some kind of food to stay alive. 

Food gives them energy and helps them to grow and to stay healthy.
Green plants can make their own food.
Some animals eat plants, and some animals eat other animals.
Food energy passes from plants to animals in a long chain.
This is called a food chain.

Food Chain - Lichen - Great grey slug - Common toad - Grass snake

Food chain - Thistle - Garden snail - Song thrush - Sparrowhawk

 Food Chain - Blackberries - Bank vole - Stoat

All food chains begin with plants.
Green plants take in water and a gas called carbon dioxide.
Light from the sun helps the plants join these together to make sugars.
These sugars are the plants'food.

Herbivores Animals

Next in the food chain come the animals that eat plants, such as sheep or rabbits. These animals are called herbivores. Herbivores are eaten in turn by animals that eat meat, such as foxes, which eat rabbits. Meat-eaters are called carnivores. Human beings and some other animals, such as bears and pigs, are called omnivores. They eat both plants and animals.

 All food chains begin with plants. Green plants take in water and a gas called carbon dioxide.
Light from the sun helps the plants join these together to make sugars.
These sugars are the plants'food.
Next in the food chain come the animals that eat plants, such as sheep or rabbits.
These animals are called herbivores.
Herbivores are eaten in turn by animals that eat meat, such as foxes, which eat rabbits.

Carnivorous animals

Meat-eaters are called carnivores.

Omnivores animals

Human beings and some other animals, such as bears and pigs, are called omnivores.
They eat both plants and animals.