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.
Feathers are special to birds — no other animal group has them — and every bird also hatches from an egg laid by its mother.
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
Frogs start life as tadpoles in water and move to land when they grow legs, which is the life cycle that defines the amphibian group.
3. Which of these is a producer in a food chain?
A) Grass
B) Rabbit
C) Fox
D) Eagle
A trout is a fish, and all fish use gills to pull oxygen out of the water instead of breathing air with lungs.
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.
Reptiles have dry, tough scales covering their skin, which protect them and keep their bodies from losing water in hot places.
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.
Even though dolphins swim in the ocean, they breathe air, are warm-blooded, and feed milk to their babies — all traits of mammals.
2. An animal that is hunted and eaten by another animal is called prey.
Counting legs is one of the easiest ways to tell an insect apart from a spider — insects always have six and spiders have eight.
3. Plants are called producers because they make their own food.
Cold-blooded means a reptile's body temperature depends on the weather, so reptiles often lie in the sun to warm up and move to the shade to cool down.
4. A food chain shows how energy passes from one living thing to another.
An owl has feathers, wings, and a beak — just like every bird — and it uses its sharp night vision to hunt mice after dark.
5. In the food chain grass, rabbit, fox, the rabbit is both prey and a consumer.
Caterpillars wrap themselves in a chrysalis, and after many days they come out with wings as a full-grown butterfly — this big change is called metamorphosis.