Inherited And Adapted Characteristics of Animals
Animals can come in many shapes and forms, from the biggest land animal, the elephant, to a tiny ant. Each animal is completely different from each other. Can you think of what makes a dog different from a cat? If you were to describe them they would sound almost identical but by seeing their characteristics with your eyes you know they are different. Every animal has inherited characteristics within them and as time goes on animals can adapt to new environments by passing on unique traits that make surviving easier. This creates "Adapted Characteristics". For instance how some monkeys have long tails to balance and hold onto trees while gorillas have strong arms and legs for walking on the ground. Both have adapted to their environments. Many animals have different characteristics. There is one easy way to bunch them up in order to learn them easier.
How do we do that?
We can simply put large groups of animals into different categories. Those categories help make describing the animal much easier to learn.
Different categories of animals:
- Mammals
- Birds
- Reptiles
- Fish
- Amphibians
- Insects
How do we do that?
We can simply put large groups of animals into different categories. Those categories help make describing the animal much easier to learn.
Different categories of animals:
- Mammals
- Birds
- Reptiles
- Fish
- Amphibians
- Insects
MammalsExample of Inherited and Adaptive Characteristics of Mammals:
Mammals are warm blooded. Do not lay eggs. Have either four to two legs. Some live in water like whales and dolphins. Majority of mammals have fur. | BirdsExample of Inherited and Adaptive Characteristics of Birds:
Birds have wings. Majority of birds fly, some do not like the penguin and ostrich. All lay eggs, have feathers and beaks. And they are warm blooded. |
ReptilesExample of Inherited and Adaptive Characteristics of Reptiles:
All Reptiles lay eggs. They are all cold blooded. Some have four legs like turtles some do not have legs like snakes. They can live in and out of water. | FishExample of Inherited and Adaptive Characteristics of Fish:
All fish live in water. They all have gills and fins. They lay a lot of eggs. And they are cold blooded. |
InsectsExample of Inherited and Adaptive Characteristics of Insects:
Insects are extremely different from the rest because they do not have a vertebrate (backbone). They have exoskeletons and can vary in amount of legs. (From 4- 16 plus.) | AmphibiansExample of Inherited and Adaptive Characteristics of Amphibians:
Amphibians live in both water and land. They lay eggs and have moist skin. They are also cold blooded. |
Let see if you can take what you just learned and use that information to make animals in this game. click here to play the game!
Click on the pictures below to hear types of sounds different animals make. See if you can guess which ones are which.
The first picture shows you which animal you will hear.
which is my dog as a puppy (her name is Kelly) The ones below are up to you to guess what animal it is. |