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Food chains and food webs

Follow food and energy from the Sun to plants, plant-eaters and meat-eaters, and see how food chains join into food webs.

Get the whole book: Science for classes 3 to 5 (9 lessons, free to print)

Let us begin

The big idea

Every living thing needs food. A deer eats grass and a tiger eats the deer. Who gives the grass its food? Let us follow the trail of food from one living thing to the next.

Green plants make their own food using sunlight, so they are called producers. Their energy comes from the Sun.

Animals cannot make food, so they are called consumers. Animals that eat only plants are herbivores, like cows and deer. Animals that eat other animals are carnivores, like tigers and snakes. Animals that eat both are omnivores, like humans and crows.

A food chain shows who eats whom. It begins with a plant. For example: grass → grasshopper → frog → snake → eagle. The arrows show the way food and energy travel.

Decomposers, such as many kinds of fungi and bacteria, break down dead plants and animals. They return nutrients to the soil, which helps new plants grow.

In nature, most animals eat more than one thing. So food chains cross over and join. Many connected food chains make a food web.

A simple food chainThe Sun at the top with an arrow down to a box labelled Grass. Arrows point from Grass to Deer and from Deer to Tiger. Under the boxes the labels read producer, primary consumer and secondary consumer. Sun Grass Deer Tiger Producer Makes its own food Herbivore Eats plants Carnivore Eats animals Arrows point to the one that eats
The arrows show how food and energy pass from one living thing to the next.

Worked examples

See how it works

  1. A grassland food chain

    Grass → deer → tiger. The grass is the producer. The deer is a herbivore that eats grass. The tiger is a carnivore that eats the deer.

  2. A pond food chain

    Water plants → small fish → bigger fish → heron. A heron is a bird that catches fish.

  3. A food web

    A snake may eat a frog and also a rat. An eagle may eat the snake and also the rat. So the chains grass → grasshopper → frog → snake and grain → rat → snake join together to make a web.

Try it at home

Build a food web

You will need

  • Paper
  • Scissors (child-safe) or just a pencil
  • Pencil or crayons

What to do

  1. On small pieces of paper, write or draw: grass, grasshopper, rat, frog, snake and eagle.
  2. Place them on a table. Put the producer first.
  3. Join them into one chain with arrows. The arrow points to the one who eats.
  4. Now make a second chain: grass → rat → snake. Where do the two chains meet?
  5. Tell a family member what would happen to the frogs if all the grasshoppers disappeared.

Ask a grown-up: A grown-up should help with the scissors, if used.

Fun fact

Without decomposers, dead leaves and animals would pile up. They break them down and put nutrients back into the soil.

Practice sheet

Check what you learned

Write your answers in a notebook, or print this sheet and write on it. When you finish, mark your work with the answer key.

Practice sheet: Food chains and food webs (Classes 3-5, Science)

  1. What is the first living thing in nearly every food chain?
  2. What do we call plants in a food chain, and why?
  3. Is a cow a herbivore, carnivore or omnivore?
  4. Is a tiger a herbivore, carnivore or omnivore?
  5. Is a crow, which eats grains and insects, a herbivore, carnivore or omnivore?
  6. Write a food chain with grass, deer and tiger.
  7. In grass → grasshopper → frog → snake, who is the producer?
  8. In the same chain, what does the arrow from frog to snake mean?
  9. What do we call many food chains joined together?
  10. If all the frogs in a pond disappeared, name one thing that might happen to the insects they eat.

Answer key

Answers: Food chains and food webs

Do the practice sheet first, then check here. If an answer is different from yours, read the lesson again and try once more.

  1. A green plant.
  2. Producers, because they make their own food using sunlight.
  3. Herbivore.
  4. Carnivore.
  5. Omnivore.
  6. Grass → deer → tiger.
  7. Grass.
  8. The snake eats the frog.
  9. A food web.
  10. There could be more insects, because fewer animals eat them.

What next

Keep learning

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