Lesson Four - Explain

What does a whale shark eat?

Who’s eating who?

This lesson will involve work inside the classroom and down in the frog bog, so I hope it a fine day!

Today you will be learning about food chains and food webs and looking at how a whale shark feeds.

To start with you are going to play the Food Web Game at the end of the game you will discuss some of the issues that happened during the game.

Next look at an example of a food chain, compare it to your example of a food web. What is the difference between a food chain and a food web?

Draw a simple food web using the creatures in your game (years 4-5) or fill in the chart to show who are the top level predators down to the producers (years 6-7).

Now grab your scoop nets and petri dishes and head down to the frog bog. Your research will have taught you that a whale shark is a filter feeder (one of three filter feeding sharks). You will be using your scoop nets to filter out macro-invertebrates living in the water of the frog bog. Using the zoom scopes and microscopes have a look at what you found. These organisms are the size of some of the food a whale shark feeds on. Imagine how many a whale shark would need to eat!

Using your microscope draw a picture of your macro-invertebrate.

Now draw a food chain for a whale shark, describe what would happen to the creatures in the food chain if the population of one of them became very scarce or died out.

Happy scooping!