Eating LikE a Bird

(2 HOurS)

Students will observe how various beak types can adapt to different environments.

Overview
Topic: Adaptation Real World Science Topics:
An exploration of how physical adaptations occur in a population

Objective
Students will gain an understanding of how the physical characteristics of a species become adapted to a particular environment.

Materials Needed for Warm-up:

pieces of chalk unsharpened pencils (enough for each student in the class) piece of paper paper cups or bowls (one for each student)

Materials Needed for Student Activity:

Food gummy worms or rubber bands gummy or Swedish fish (placed in a large bowl of water) dry rice, lentils, sunflower seeds, or birdseed raisins or tiny marshmallows coffee stirrers or thin straws Beaks spoons tweezers small binder clips chopsticks Plates/large bowls for food stations

Teacher Preparation
For the warm-up, break pieces of chalk into small pieces and place them scattered in one area of the floor. Ensure that there is enough room for the entire class to sit around these pieces in a circle. Tear up enough pieces of paper for each student in the class. On half of the pieces write human hands and on the other half write pencil hands. Set up several stations around the classroom with different food types. Each station represents a different environment. Stations should be arranged so there is equal access to the food for four students at a time.

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Eating LikE a Bird

Standards Met

(2 HOurS)

National Science Standards Addressed Content Standard C: Life Science Biological evolution accounts for the diversity of species developed through gradual processes over many generations. Species acquire many of their unique characteristics through biological adaptation, which involves the selection of naturally occurring variations in populations. Biological adaptations include changes in structures, behaviors, or physiology that enhance survival and reproductive success in a particular environment. National Math Standards Addressed Connection Standard for Grades 3-5: recognize and apply mathematics in contexts outside of mathematics. National Technology Standards Addressed Demonstrate personal responsibility for lifelong learning. Contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems.

Sources:
National Science Teachers Association http://books.nap.edu/html/nses/overview.html#content National Council of Teachers of Mathematics http://standards.nctm.org/document/appendix/process.htm#bp4 National Educational Technology Standards http://cnets.iste.org/currstands/cstands-netss.html

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STEPS FOR Eating LikE a Bird

1. Warm-up Activity: Have students sit in a circle. Tell them to imagine that they are about to be reborn into a world where humans eat pieces of chalk. Tell them that half of the students in the class will be born with regular hands and fingers, and the other half of the students will be born with pencil hands. Put the labeled pieces of paper in a hat or bowl, and have each student pick a piece. Distribute two unsharpened pencils to each student who draws pencil hands. Distribute a paper cup (or bowl) to each student, and then have the students place the cups or bowls on the floor behind them. Tell students that they are hungry and need to eat food. They will have one minute to pick up pieces of chalk and place the pieces in their paper cup. They can only pick up one piece of chalk at a time. remind students that they should move quickly but carefully, and they should not push or touch any other students while feeding. Have students complete this activity. Then have all the human hands students place their pieces of collected chalk in one pile in the middle of the circle and all the pencil hands students place their pieces of collected chalk in a second pile. Students should observe that the human hands picked up many more pieces of food than the pencil hands. Ask students what would happen when the pencil hands students arent able to eat enough food. Help students realize that the pencil hands would probably die because their hands arent very good at picking up food in that environment. Because the human hands can eat food, they will probably live and go on to have human hand children. Ask students to think about how the types of hands in the population would change over time. This process is called adaptation. 2. Explain that students will now be reborn as birds with different bird beaks. They are going to travel to different environments and see how well they can eat in each environment. Divide students into groups of four. Hand out a different beak type to each student in the group. Have students keep their cup from the warm-up activity for collecting food. Make sure each student has a Student Handout for recording their results. 3. Send each group to a food station. Tell the students that they will have one minute to eat as much food as they can with their beak type. They may use the beak in any manner (grasping, scooping, spearing), but let the students discover for themselves which method is most effective. However, they should use the beak to gather food items one at a time, or at least at a rate that reasonably mimics the natural environment. In other words, spoons should not be used to scoop large piles of seeds (because seeds do not occur in large piles in nature; even birdfeeders distribute seeds moderately). remind students that they should not feed aggressively and they should refrain from pushing and shoving other students. 4. Start the timer and have students gather as much food as they can for one minute, placing it in their cups. At the end of one minute, they should count how many food items they collected and record the results on their worksheets. After they have recorded the results, they should carefully put the food back on the station for the next group. 5. Have students rotate through all the food stations with the same beak type, recording their results for each different food type. 6. After the groups have rotated through all the stations, students will trade beaks and repeat the experiment a second time as a different bird. repeat the experiment until each student has tried all the different beaks

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STEPS FOR Eating LikE a Bird

and all the food stations. 7. Wrap-up Activity: Have students return to their seats and analyze the results recorded on their worksheets. Have them list which beak was best and worst suited to each food type, based on how much food was gathered by each beak type. 8. Tally students results in a table on the blackboard (they should be similar). Have a discussion about the features of each beak that made some more suitable for a type of food than others. If results differ significantly, talk about what might have caused that. In particular, make sure discrepancies were related to actual beak adaptations and not simply experimental error, like students intentionally or accidentally misusing the beaks. Ask students, What will happen to the birds whose beaks pick up food well in each environment? Students should see that, in each environment, some birds will have physical characteristics that make them better suited to survive than others. Because of that characteristic, those birds will tend to go on and have offspring, and those offspring will have the same well-suited physical characteristics. Over time, more and more birds will be born with well-suited bird beaks for that environment, and that physical characteristic will begin to dominate the species in that environment. We say that the bird beaks have adapted to the environment. Explain that animals could adapt any physical or behavioral characteristic if it serves some function that helps the animal survive better. 9. To connect the activity to the real world, think about birds that are well-adapted to their environments. For example, pelicans live over water and have a pouched beak for scooping fish. Woodpeckers live in the forest and have very hard, sharp beaks for pecking through tree bark. Eating Like a Bird Extension Activity Have the entire class sit in a circle. Distribute different beak types to students at random. Place one food type in the center of the circle (enough for the entire class). Allow one minute for students to pick up as much food as they can, placing it in a cup. The teacher will record how much food was picked up by each beak type. The beak type that collected the least amount of food will die off and be reborn as the other, more successful beak types. (For example, if the activity began with four spoons, four chopsticks, four clips, and four sets of tweezers, and the chopsticks die off, the students will be reborn as one set of tweezers, one spoon, and two clips. They should be reborn proportionate to the success of the other beak types in the previous round.) repeat the experiment until only one beak type remains. Then lead a discussion about how the population changed as birds with less well-suited beaks died off in the environment. Have students think about how this would happen on a larger scale over a longer amount of time.

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Eating LikE a Bird BACkgROuNd INFORMATION

What is an adaptation?
An adaptation is any physical or behavioral property that helps an organism survive in its environment. Adaptations can be related to how an organism gathers food and eats, how it protects itself from predators and the environment, how it builds its home, how it attracts a mate, or other factors that help it survive. Adaptations are the result of natural selection.

What is natural selection?

Natural selection is the process by which organisms with successful physical traits become more common and those with unsuccessful traits die off. Organisms that are better suited to their environments are better able to reproduce and pass on their traits. Over generations, those traits become dominant in the population and are considered adaptations.

How do adaptations occur?

An adaptation spreads through a population because it helps an organism survive. It does not spread so that the organism will survive. That is, adaptations are not purposeful. For example, pelicans did not evolve pouched beaks so that they could scoop up fish. They evolved pouched beaks because the individuals that had that physical characteristic were able to pick up more fish than the ones that didnt. Therefore, they survived better and passed along that trait to the next generation. In this way, pouched beaks were passed on through natural selection, and over time that feature became an adaptation.

key Vocabulary organism: any living thing habitat: the specific environment in which a plant or animal lives generation: a group of related organisms that are the same age trait: a particular characteristic of an organism species: a group of organisms that share common characteristics and are able to successfully reproduce adaptation: any physical or behavioral property that helps an organism survive in its environment

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STudENT HANdOuT FOR Eating LikE a Bird

Food item Beak type: Beak type: Beak type: Beak type:

Answer the following questions: Is any beak type the best for all environments?

What happens to birds that cant pick up food easily in an environment?

What happens to birds that can pick up food easily in an environment?

A chameleon has skin that blends in with the environment. Why might this be an adaptation?

Why might your fingers be an adaptation to your environment?

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TEACHER HANdOuT FOR Eating LikE a Bird

Food item Beak type:
Tweezers [Answers will vary]

Beak type:
Chopsticks [Answers will vary]

Beak type:
Spoon [Answers will vary]

Beak type:
Binder clip [Answers will vary]

raisins

straws

seeds

gummy worms

gummy fish

Answer the following questions: Is any beak type the best for all environments?
No, different beaks were better in some environments and worse in others.

What happens to birds that cant pick up food easily in an environment?

They will probably die.

What happens to birds that can pick up food easily in an environment?

They will probably survive and have children that have the same physical characteristics as them.

A chameleon has skin that blends in with the environment. Why might this be an adaptation?
Because the chameleon blends in with its environment, predators tend to overlook it, and this helps the chameleon survive better.

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TEACHER HANdOuT FOR Eating LikE a Bird

Why might your fingers be an adaptation to your environment?
Fingers help us to grab objects easily, and this helps us build shelter and eat food, which help us survive better in our environment.

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