All this gear helps adapt me to a water environment. This
snorkel lets me breathe under water. This mask
helps me to see underwater, and these fins help me swim faster.
Living things don't put on gear to adapt to their environments.
Instead, over many generations, the features that help them
survive in their environment are passed on. Eventually the whole
group has the characteristics that allow them to survive and reproduce in
their environment. Characteristics
to help an organism survive and reproduce are called
adaptations. Adaptations may 1st happen by
chance, but creatures that have them tend to do a little better and
have more young. So generation after generation,
characteristics that make an organism better suited to its environment are
more likely to be passed on. Over time, more and
more individuals in a group of organisms have the adaptation.
To see under water and cover my nose, I had to put on this
mask. Fevers have adaptations for that
a membrane over their eyes and nose plugs.
Most features that you can see are adaptations.
Adaptations help animals hide, avoid predators, catch
prey, find food, and survive harsh weather.
Living things can have two kinds of adaptations.
Organisms' physical adaptations to their environments are called
structural adaptations. For example, the
bullfrog's camouflage helps it hide, and its strong leg
muscles make it a great jumper. The great
horned owl's excellent hearing and night vision help it locate
prey in the dark. Their sharp talons catch and hold prey,
and their curved beaks help them tear food apart.
Porcupines have structural adaptations that make them painful
to catch. Their quills are thick, loosely attached hairs
with tiny barbs at their tips. Porcupines can't shoot their
quills. They come out easily when jumped on or bitten.
Sometimes the porcupine swats its attacker with its tail. When a
porcupine is threatened, it turns its back. This protects its
belly and base, which don't have quills. Turning its back to an
attacker and swatting with its tail are behavioral
adaptations. The way an animal acts helps
it survive in its environment. These actions are called
behavioral adaptations.
Other behavioral adaptations help animals survive harsh
conditions, for example, the migration of songbirds in the
fall to find food. Birds that don't migrate
like the wild turkey have behavioral adaptations for dealing with
snow. They dig through snow to find acorns and other
seeds. Many animals have behaviors that help them
survive winter conditions. Sometimes an animal uses the
combination of structural and behavioral adaptations.
Fox turtle shells protect the turtle from predators. When the
turtle is threatened, it pulls in its head and legs.
Snapping turtles don't have strong bottom shells to protect their legs and
tail, so they swim away when threatened.
If threatened on land, they defend themselves by snapping with a long
neck and powerful beak. Adaptations help
animals survive, thrive, and reproduce in their
environments. Adaptations have to do with the way an animal is
made, the way it acts, or a combination of the two.
But one way or another, the animals that survive in a particular
environment are the ones with adaptations to that environment.
When I get back to the nature center, I'll ask big more about
adaptations, but for now, I'm going back in the water.
Thanks a lot, Patrice, for helping me with the props. We've got a couple of
minutes here before the the mini talk is supposed to start. You wanna see him?
Uh, let me take him out of here.
So what things help him from being eaten? Actually opossums
have a lot of behavioral adaptations. If they do detect danger
with their ears, they sometimes can scurry into a hole underground or maybe even climb up a
tree, but if they can't get to one of those places like that, then they have a couple
other things up their sleeve. They have a behavioral adaptation that some people refer
to as being called playing possum. Have you ever heard that?
You playing some people might call it playing dead. What it is is probably a a
way for them just to shut their system down and actually take on the appearance of being dead. They,
they lay on their sides, close their eyes. Bite their tongue and
if an animal then picks them up and shakes them they actually are limp just like they'd be when they're
dead and they may stay like that for, you know, a couple of minutes or even
longer but if the animal gets distracted that attack
them, you know, it might give them an opportunity to come to and get away so you
know, in a sense all of those things are behavioral adaptations that would help a
possum perhaps survive. I've always heard people say
that opossums hang by their tail. Is that true? They have a great
tail if you see it hanging over the side here a little bit they've got
uh what's called a prehensile tail but by the time
opossums get this large or even larger because this one isn't even a full grown one,
their weight is too heavy for them to really support themselves by their tail.
How do they find food? Possums basically find everything
with their nose. If you look at their noses way out on the tip,
uh, they have very good hearing, but that's probably only good for detecting
danger so that they don't become food for somebody else. What I've got here is got some little pieces
of fruit. I got some wild grapes here that I can set
out. And I also have a little bit of meat, oops, I
guess he likes grapes. So their structural adaptations
are important for their survival, right? Right, not only their
structural adaptations but also their behavioral adaptations as well,
you know, some adaptations like their tail are really easy to see and it's kind of
a unique structural adaptation. I'll uh certainly agree but you know
what? there's another animal that has a really unique structural adaptation in its
tail. It's got some behavioral adaptations that are interesting as well you know
what that animal is? The beaver.
If you wanna see a beaver, you have to be really quiet. They
don't like surprises. Find a comfortable place downwind
so the beaver doesn't pick up your scent, then settle in and wait.
Beavers are the largest rodents in North America. Rodents have
sharp flat front teeth called incisors that are good for
gnawing. Mice, squirrels, and porcupines are also
rodents. Beavers use their teeth to cut down and snip off
branches they need to build their lodges and dams. The beaver's
front teeth grow throughout their lives. This is important because
gnawing wears down their teeth. Beavers are 3 to 4 ft
long and can weigh from 35 to 70 pounds.
Beavers have large flat tails. Some people think beavers use their
tails to pack down mud or as a propeller in the water, but they don't.
They use their tails for balance. When beavers gnaw on trees, they
stand on their hind legs and press down with their tails. This
helps them get a bigger bite out of the tree and cut it down more quickly.
The quicker beavers cut down trees, the faster they can slip back into the
water where it's harder for predators to get them. Beavers also
slap their tails against the water. This may serve as a warning to other
beavers. Beaver lodges are
built in streams and lakes and marshes and are made of sticks packed
with mud. A lodge may have as many as 3 generations of a beaver
family living in it. Inside the lodge just above the
water is a living chamber. Beavers enter the lodge using underwater
tunnels. In winter, the mud covering the lodge freezes.
This makes it very difficult for predators to dig into the lodge.
A lodge may look quiet in the winter, but beavers are still active in the
living chamber and under the ice. They spend time grooming and feeding
on the branches they've stored under the now frozen water.
Beavers change their environment to meet their needs. They build
dams out of branches and small rocks and mud to create ponds.
Ponds range in size from less than 1 acre to over 100 acres.
Beavers depend on their ponds for shelter, food, and protection.
Use and expand the pond until food supplies are gone.
After abandoning a pond site, beavers move to another area.
If they don't return the old beaver pond turns into a meadow and
eventually a forest. Structural and behavioral
adaptations are important to the survival of any animal, but sometimes
they can still have accidents. Cody and Octo are going to
visit Andy Stamper of the New England Aquarium. He helped sea
turtles that have stranded themselves during migration.
Hey Cody and uh Todd, welcome to the New England Aquarium. This is our critical care
award right now we're treating Caly sea turtles, which
have washed ashore in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Do their adaptation adaptations like help them
survive. Adaptations. His skin is
shell protect him from the salt water. Um,
salt water is pretty harsh, and they can dehydrate in it. They
also got a hard shell which is known as a carapace
um and that is used also for just, uh, protecting
them against uh attacks such as shark attacks and other
turtles.
They don't get any water in their eyes, do they? His eyes
have a gland called the slot gland or lacrimal
gland, and what that does is when they do swallow water, they're
able to excrete it out through their tears. How about their beak, does it like help them
to help them survive? Well, their beak
is uh very uh well adapted to fend off anything that's
attacking them and also it's very well, um.
Well shaped and has a lot of jaw pressure to be able to grab and crack
crabs and other crustaceans. Is their
bottom like underneath their stomach? Is it like really
hard and we need to look at that anyway, so we're gonna hooked him up
and again it's. It's hard just like on top, but
this is another very fascinating adaption that they actually have a
flexible. It moves compared to like
a a tortoise land tortoise which doesn't move and that's because they dive very deeply
and there's a lot of pressure when you go deep down like if you've been
diving in a pool, you know how your ears start to to hurt that's
pressure of the water and so they need to be able to deal, deal with that and they've adapted to
be able to move their plaster, which is the bottom.
Um, to be able to compensate for that, these
animals have, uh, survived millions and millions of years, and
they're very, very well adapted for the
ocean. Uh, the biggest problem right now is impacts of humans
on them. And so we need to give, we need to give them a helping
hand to be able to overcome that because the adaptions
can't evolve that quickly and, uh, we're, they're
disappearing quicker than they can adapt to it.
What have we learned today?
Over time, all plants and animals develop adaptations that
help them thrive and survive. Some
adaptations are structural. There are changes in the organism's
physical makeup. Some adaptations are behavioral.
They are changes in the way an organism interacts with its environment.
Now you know how nature works.
Major funding for Nature Works was provided by American Honda
Foundation. Additional funding was provided by Alice Freeman
Mutchnick, Alice J Rene Charitable Trust, Cogswell
Benevolent Trust, the Finnita Fund, Greater
Piscataqua Community Foundation, Moreridge Family
Trust, the Natural Areas Wildlife Fund, Ross