Who's in the House - Science Play

A habitat is a special place where a plant or animal lives. Just like you have a home or place to live, so do animals and plants. When we talk about an animal’s or a plant's home it is more like a neighborhood than a "house." An animal needs five things to survive in its habitat: food, water, shelter, air and a place to raise its young.

Animals require different amounts of space. Habitats can be big like a forest or they can be much smaller like a burrow. Some animals defend a huge territory or roam over a large area. Some other animals need only a small amount of space and can put up with neighbors that live close.

Just like you have to go to the store to get food, an animal leaves its "shelter" to get the things they need to live. If the population's needs aren't met, it will move to a better habitat.

Different animals need different habitats. A fish, for example, needs clean water in which to live. A grasshopper, however, needs a big space where it can hop and leaves that it can eat.
  

Here are a few habitats we observed:

Doodle Bugs or Ant Lion pits

Several different species of ants

Carpenter bees bore through soft woods to lay eggs and protect their larvae as they develop. Female carpenter bees will chew a tunnel into a piece of wood to build a nest gallery. The bits of wood she chews and deposits outside the nest are called "frass". The tunnel openings usually look about one or two inches deep, but they can be up to 10 feet long! These tunnels usually have several rooms where the bees hold their eggs and food. 

Wasp Nest

 Spider web

 Wood boring insects in a dead tree

We also saw: birds nests, squirrels nests, rolly-polies and slugs under rocks, spider egg sacks, lizards on trees