Who Eats Who? The Amazing Food Chain

Think about your lunch. Maybe you had bread, an apple, or some chicken. Where did that food come from? The bread came from wheat. The chicken ate grain. The apple grew on a tree. Every meal you eat is part of a chain — a food chain! In this lesson you will discover how energy travels from plants all the way to animals like us.

A food chain shows the order in which living things eat each other. It always starts with a plant. Plants are special because they make their own food using sunlight, water, and air. No other living thing can do this. Because plants make food, we call them producers. That means they produce, or make, food. Animals cannot make their own food — they have to eat. We call animals consumers. That means they consume, or eat, something else. The first animal in the chain eats the plant. This animal is called a herbivore — an animal that eats only plants. The next animal eats the herbivore. This animal is often called a predator — an animal that hunts and eats other animals. We use arrows to show a food chain. The arrow means 'is eaten by' or 'energy passes to'. So the arrow always points from the food to the animal eating it. Here is a real food chain you could find in a garden: Leaf → Caterpillar → Robin → Sparrowhawk The leaf makes energy using sunlight. The caterpillar eats the leaf and gets that energy. The robin eats the caterpillar and gets the energy. The sparrowhawk eats the robin and gets the energy. Notice how energy moves along the chain, one step at a time. Each arrow shows energy moving forward.