4th Class Science Plants and Animals Adaptation for protection

Adaptation for protection

Category : 4th Class

Adaptation for Protection

The living world is full of challenges. Organisms have to adopt all the harsh conditions of the environment, in order to live and reproduce. Apart from the harsh environmental conditions like high and low temperature, little or lots of water etc., a major struggle of the animals is for food. Many of the animals are the food for other animals. Mostly the carnivores or omnivores hunt herbivores for their requirement of foods. However, many of the animals have adopted special features that help them to protect themselves from enemies. Let us look and understand at some of the special adaptive features of animal have evolved specially for their protection against their enemies.

Large Size

Huge sizes of some animals are enough to scare away their enemies. For example, bear, elephant and hippopotamus are so gigantic that their mere sizes scare away most of their enemies. It is not a common that a lion is attacking an elephant.

Hippopotamus

Strong Legs

Some animals have very strong legs and are able to run very fast. These animals due to their great speed run away from their enemies. Dear is a good example.

Deer

Position of Eyes and Ear

The long ears help them to hear the slightest of the movement. Hearing the slightest of movement they run for their life. The position of eyes on the side of its head allow them to look in all direction for danger. The large ear of the elephant helps them to hear even very soft sounds. This alarms them much in advance and they move away from danger. The position of eyes and ears help deer to move quickly away from the enemies.

Move in Herds

Most of the animals protect themselves from their enemies by moving in large groups. This large group is known as herd. It becomes difficult for the enemies to attack such a large group. Hence animal remain safe. For example, dear, wild buffaloes, monkeys, elephants move in herd.

Elephant Herd

Different Body Covering

Many animals such as tortoise, turtle, snail, crab have hard outer covering on their body known as shell. This shell protects their soft body parts from injury and also from the attack of the enemies. These animals also have a special characteristic of withdrawing their body parts into their shell at the time of danger. Some animals such as porcupines or hedgehogs have spines covering their body. When a hedgehogs sense danger, it rolls up into a ball. This ball of spines is not easy for the enemy to attack and they remain safe.

Tortoise

Camouflage

Camouflage is a phenomenon in which a animal's body colour merge or blends with their surroundings. This makes it very difficult for the enemy to spot. The chameleon, a lizard like animal can also change the color of their skins to match their surroundings.

Grasshopper and Chameleon

A stick insect looks almost like a twig. Grasshopper is also a perfect example of camouflage. The colour of the polar bear and the arctic fox matches with the surrounding snow and thus makes it very difficult to spot. The stripes of zebra and tiger make it difficult to be easily spotted in the forest. Apart from these, some animals have their unique way of protecting themselves from enemies. For example, some snakes and opossums pretend to be dead when they are in danger. If a flying fish is chased by an enemy, it jumps out of the water and flies by spreading its large fins. Globefish blows itself up to twice its normal size. So that it looks much bigger and scares away its enemy.

Rhinoceros

Rhinoceros and wild bedfellow when confronted with their enemy stand and fight them. They use their horns while fighting. These are only a few of the adaptations that we know of. There must be many more about which we don't know. The living world is so vast, fascinating, and mysterious that we may never be able to understand and open up all the secrets that it holds.