Animal Groups & Habitats — Answer Key
Part A: Multiple Choice
Circle the best answer for each question.
1. In a food chain, what do all food chains start with?
A) A large predator.
B) An insect.
C) A plant or the sun.
D) A body of water.
Every food chain begins with a plant or with the sun, because plants use sunlight to make their own food and pass that energy on to the animals that eat them.
2. A hawk eats a mouse that eats seeds. What is the hawk in this food chain?
A) Herbivore
B) Producer
C) Predator
D) Prey
The hawk hunts and eats the mouse, and any animal that hunts other animals for food is called a predator.
3. Which of these is a producer in a food chain?
A) Grass
B) Rabbit
C) Fox
D) Eagle
Producers make their own food using sunlight, and out of grass, rabbit, fox, and eagle, only grass is a plant that can do that.
4. What would happen if all the rabbits disappeared from a meadow food chain?
A) The grass would disappear too.
B) The foxes would have less food to eat.
C) The sun would stop shining.
D) Nothing would change.
Foxes eat rabbits, so if all the rabbits in the meadow disappeared, the foxes would have less food to eat and would struggle to survive.
Part B: Fill in the Blank
Write the correct answer on each line.
1. An animal that hunts other animals for food is called a predator.
An animal that hunts other animals for food is called a predator, like a hawk hunting a mouse.
2. An animal that is hunted and eaten by another animal is called prey.
When an animal is hunted and eaten by another animal, it is the prey in that food chain, like a mouse being caught by a hawk.
3. Plants are called producers because they make their own food.
Plants are called producers because they use sunlight to make, or produce, their own food instead of eating other living things.
4. A food chain shows how energy passes from one living thing to another.
A food chain is really a path that shows how energy moves from the sun to plants and then from one animal to the next as they eat each other.
5. In the food chain grass, rabbit, fox, the rabbit is both prey and a consumer.
The rabbit eats grass, which makes it a consumer, so even though the fox hunts it as prey, the rabbit is also a consumer in the same food chain.