Animal Adaptations - Monroe County Schools

4 th - Animal Adaptations Rev. 2012
Adaptation – specialized traits or characteristics (physical/structural or behavioral) that help a living thing to
survive.
Behavioral Adaptation – Anything an animal does (actions of the animal) involving action and/or response to
stimulation that helps it to survive. (Examples: traveling in herds or packs, schools of fish, surrounding young
to protect them, playing dead)
Physical / Structural Adaptation – Anything pertaining to the animal’s body structure, covering or parts that
help it to survive. (examples: canine teeth, claws, beaks, webbed feet, stripes, spots, long neck, sticky tongue)
Survival / Survive – The way animals use adaptations to continue to live.
Camouflage – the ability to blend in with the surroundings or environment. A color or shape in an animal's
body covering that blends in with the surrounding environment.
Color Warning – when animals have brightly colored body coverings that warn their predators to stay away.
(The poison dart frog’s colors tell its predators that it is poisonous and foul tasting.)
Mimicry - An adaptation in which an otherwise harmless animal looks like a harmful animal in order to
protect itself. (Example: a harmless milk snake or king snake has the same coloring of the poisonous coral
snake except the colors are not in the same order on the body. "Red against yellow: kill a fellow. Red
against black: friend to Jack.")
Migration – moving from place to place in order to meet an animal’s basic needs of food, shelter or proper
climate in order to survive. (examples birds flying south for the winter, elephants leaving an area to find
water in a drought, animals that move to find food when their prey is wiped-out by a disease)
Hibernation – A dormant, inactive state in which normal body activities slow and certain animals become
inactive during colder weather and sleep for an extended time.

Behavior – The actions of animals
Instinct – A behavior an animal is born with and does not have to learn. (In humans crying is an instinct
since we can’t talk when born; baby animals search for their mother’s body to find milk or birds open their
mouths to receive food from their parents; baby sea turtles dig out of the sand and crawl straight to the
water)
Predator – An animal that hunts and eats other animals for food.
Prey – An animal that is hunted and eaten by another animal for food.
Herbivore – animals that eat only plants.
Carnivore – animals that eat other animals (meat-eaters).
Omnivore – animals that eat both plants and other animals.