Animal Adaptations

Adaptation is the way that animals change their behavior and/or their bodies in order to fit in with their environment or habitat. Think about all the ways an animal’s habitat can change: the seasons could change, causing it to be a different temperature, affecting an animal’s food supply or even the color of the leaves that usually help them blend in or protect themselves. Animals need to make changes in order to survive, and they do so by making physical adaptations or behavioral adaptations. A physical adaptation can be something like hibernation: when an animal sleeps for weeks at a time to preserve energy until spring. Behavioral adaptation can be something like migration, when animals travel to a new location where the conditions are better for their survival.

Why do we have seasons?

Where most people live on Earth, in the Northern hemisphere, summers are hot and filled with many hours of strong sunlight, while winters are cold due to shortened hours of daylight and weak sunlight. Why is this? One big part of the answer is that Earth is tilted on its axis. The axis is like an imaginary stick going through the North and South poles of Earth. Earth does a complete rotation about this axis every 24 hours. But the axis isn’t straight up and down as Earth goes through its orbit about the Sun. Instead, the axis is tilted. Earth’s axis remains fixed in space, always pointing in the same direction, as Earth goes through its orbit around the Sun, and because it is tilted, this changes how the sunlight hits Earth at a given location. When it is summer in North America, the top part of the axis (the North pole) points in the direction of the Sun, and the Sun’s rays shine directly on North America; while in South America, where it’s winter, the axis is tipped away from the Sun and the Sun’s rays hit Earth on a slant.

Allergies and our Lungs

Our lungs are one of the most powerful organs in our bodies. Our lungs help us breathe, but they also allow us to bring in oxygen from outside our bodies to inside our blood stream. Different environmental factors can affect our lungs. Consider how you are able to breathe when you are next to a campfire. For some people, things like allergies or underlying conditions like asthma can affect how lungs function. Asthma causes inflammation in the lungs and airways, which causes symptoms like shortness of breath. Allergies can worsen the symptoms of asthma, so some people need to be extra careful!