One of Disney’s most famous movies is The Lion King. You may have watched this movie with your family. The movie tells the story of Simba, a young lion cub, who is trying to find his place in a very confusing world. Simba’s father, Mufasa, rules the pride lands (or grasslands) where they live. He is the ruler because the lion is at the top of the FOOD WEB on the African plains.
A food web describes all the different living things in an ecosystem, or a group of living organisms (plants, animals, etc.) that work together with nonliving parts of the environment (things like air, water and mineral soil), and how they interact with each other. There are two primary categories in a food web:
Producers make their own food and do not depend on any other organism for nutrition. Some producers in Simba’s Pride Land would be plants, grasses and trees.
Consumers are animals that eat the producers in order to survive. There are many levels of consumers.
Primary Consumers in the Pride Land are herbivores, or animals that eat only the plants and grasses. Examples of these animals are elephants and zebras.
Secondary Consumers are animals like cheetahs and hyenas that eat the zebras and other herbivores. As animals get bigger or learn how to hunt in a pack, they reach a higher level in the food web. In the Pride Land, the lion is the apex predator, or the top of the food web.
Look around your yard. Look at the many different creatures that are around. See if you can create a food web. Remember: always start your web with plants and grasses!
Food Web – noun
1. a series of organisms related by predator-prey and consumer-resource interactions; the entirety of interrelated food chains in an ecological community. Also called food cycle.
Did you know?
Before they worked on The Lion King, several of the film’s creators spent two weeks on safari in Kenya, studying how real lions live. They watched hunting lions, mothers with cubs and big male cats stretched out in the sun. One time, they tied a rope behind their Land Rover and drove slowly as lion cubs chased the rope, batting and playing with it just like house cats chase yarn. They made sketches and took photos of playful cubs to create young Simba and Nala.
