What is a food chain and food web?

What is a Food Chain? A food chain is like a straight line that shows who eats whom in nature. It shows how energy from food moves from one living thing to another. The arrow always points from the one being eaten to the one that eats it.

Every food chain starts with a producer. A producer is something that makes its own food, like a plant using sunlight. The animals that eat the plants are called primary consumers. The animals that eat the primary consumers are called secondary consumers.

Example:

• A deer eats grass. A tiger eats the deer.
• The food chain would look like this: Grass → Deer → Tiger(Energy moves from the grass to the deer, and then from the deer to the tiger.)

What is a Food Web? A food web is like many food chains all connected together. In real life, an animal might eat more than just one thing. A food web shows all these connections and looks more like a spider's web. It gives a more complete picture of how energy moves in an ecosystem.

Example:

• A rabbit might eat grass, but a grasshopper might also eat grass.
• A fox might eat the rabbit, but a snake might eat the grasshopper.
• An eagle might eat both the fox and the snake.

A food web shows all these criss-cross lines, making it clear that if one food source is gone, an animal might have something else to eat.