NOTES
General Awareness
Chapter 1
Animals: Habitat and Adaptations
Habitat of Animals
Habitat: the place where an animal lives.
Different animals live in different places. Water and land are two major types of habitats.
Animals living in a particular habitat adapt themselves to their surroundings.
Water includes seawater and freshwater, and land includes plain areas, forests, deserts, polar
regions, and mountains.
Forest: a large area thickly covered with trees and plants. A variety of animals live in forests.
Giraffe and Zebra- on land, lion and tiger- in caves, birds and monkeys- on trees, rabbits and
snakes- in burrows and holes.
Desert: a dry area, often covered with sand with little or no vegetation. It receives very less
rainfall.
Camels, rattlesnakes, fennec foxes, ground squirrels, etc., are found in deserts.
Polar Regions: (Artic and Antarctica) covered with snow and cold regions.
Penguins, seals, walruses, etc., are found in the polar regions.
Freshwater: Rivers, lakes, and ponds
Fishes, frogs, salamanders, toads, ducks, swans, cranes, etc., are found in freshwater habitats.
Ocean: a large body of saline (salty) water. It is the largest habitat on Earth.
Whales, dolphins, octopuses, seahorses, jellyfish, etc., live in oceans.
Adaptation: changes in the body features or behaviours of animals that help them to survive
in a particular habitat.
Different animals show different adaptations. These may be seen in their body coverings,
organs of breathing, and organs of movement.
Body Coverings in Animals
Animals have different body coverings for comfort and protection.
Shells: a hard outer covering of something.
Animals such as turtles, tortoises, snails, and oysters have shells on their body to protect
them. When they are in danger, they withdraw their head and feet into the shell.
Scales: a thick dry flake of skin.
Bodies of snakes, lizards, fishes, and crocodiles are covered with scales.
Moulting: the process by which snakes shed their old skin periodically, replacing it with a
new one.
Fur/Hair: a thick growth of hair that covers the skin of mammals.
The body of sheep, bears, rabbits, and other animals are covered with fur. This protects them
from cold and rain.
Feathers: soft, lightweight layers covering the skin of birds.
Birds have feathers on their body. They help them to fly and protect them from heat and cold.
Camouflage: a defence mechanism or tactic that organisms use to disguise their appearance,
usually to blend in with their surroundings.
Body coverings of some animals such as stick insects and grasshopper merge with their
surroundings.
It makes animals hard to spot and protect them from enemies.
Animals such as chameleons can change their colour to match with their surroundings.
Breathing and Feeding in Animals
Breathing in Animals
All living things need air to live. They take in oxygen (O2) rich air and give out carbon
dioxide (CO2) rich air.
Land animals breathe in oxygen from the air while aquatic animals breathe from water.
Different animals have different organs for breathing.
Spiracles: an external respiratory opening, especially each of a number of pores on the body
of an insect.
All insects such as grasshoppers, cockroaches, ants, ladybirds, flies, mosquitoes, and
butterflies breathe through the small holes in their body.
Gills: a respiratory organ that many aquatic organisms use to extract dissolved oxygen from
water and to excrete carbon dioxide.
Aquatic animals such as fishes and tadpoles breathe through gills.
Moist skin: slightly damp or wet skin with suggestive levels of moisture.
Frogs and earthworms breathe through their moist skin. When frogs are on land, they breathe
through their lungs.
Lungs: One of a pair of organs in the chest that supplies the body with oxygen, and removes
carbon dioxide from the body.
Except for insects and some aquatic animals, all other animals including human beings
breathe through their lungs.
From the nose, the air is carried through the windpipe to a special breathing organ, the lungs.
Whales and dolphins are aquatic animals but they have lungs to breathe. They cannot breathe
under the water.
They come to the surface for breathing. They breathe through blowholes or nostrils on the top
of their head.
Feeding Habit of Animals
Animals need food to grow and live. An animal’s food habit and mouth parts depend on
which type of food it eats.
Proboscis: an elongated feeding tube attached to the head of an animal.
Bees and butterflies suck nectar from flowers through a long and thin tube.
Nectar: a sugary fluid secreted within flowers to encourage pollination by insects and other
animals, collected by bees to make into honey.
Herbivores: animals that eat only plants.
Herbivores, such as cows and giraffes have sharp front teeth to bite leaves or grass and strong
broad teeth to chew the food well.
Carnivores: animals that eat only meat.
Animals such as tigers, lions, foxes and dos have sharp, pointed and curved front teeth to tear
flesh.
They have strong jaws. Their back teeth are broad and flat and are used for chewing the flesh.
Some animals such as snakes and frogs do not have chewing teeth. They swallow their food
whole.
Animals such as rabbits, rats and squirrels have sharp front teeth with which they bite nuts,
and seeds. These animals gnaw their food.
Gnaw: to bite something repeatedly.
Cats and dogs use their tongue to lap up milk and water.
Movement in Animals
Animals move from one place to another in search of food and water and to protect
themselves from the enemies. They also move to build their shelter.
They show different types of movements from one place to another using different body parts
(fins, feet, legs, and wings).
Terrestrial animals: animals such as cat, dog, lion, and tiger use four limbs to move, while
human beings use only hindlimbs (legs) to move. They use their forelimbs and hands.
Animals such as lizards, crocodiles, tortoises and snakes crawl on the ground with the help of
their limbs. Snakes crawl as they do not have legs at all.
Limbs: an arm or leg of a person or four-legged animal, or a bird's wing.
Forelimbs: either of the front limbs of an animal.
Hindlimbs: either of the two back limbs of an animal.
Aquatic animals: fishes have fins to swim in water.
Turtles have paddle-like limbs to move, and frogs have webbed feet to move in water.
Penguins use two forelimbs as flippers to push water and swim.
Aerial animals: most of the insects and birds fly.
Mosquitoes, bees, butterflies, house flies, and moths are the insects that can fly with the help
of their wings. Insects d not have feathers like birds.
Birds have wings that help them to fly. The wings of birds have feathers.
Ostriches, emus, and penguins are some birds that cannot fly, as their wings are weak for
flying.
Migration: the mass movement of animals from one place to another in search of favourable
environment.
Animals migrate in search of food, breeding places and to escape harsh weather.
Siberian cranes migrate to India every year in winter. They fly back to Siberia with the onset
of summer.
Arctic tern travels from Arctic circle to Antarctic circle twice a year. It covers a distance of
around 35,000 km.
Monarch butterflies fly from Canada to Mexico in winter season.
Locusts are harmful migratory insects. They migrate in swarms and destroy standing crops.
European eels swim all the way to the Sargasso Sea in the Western part of the Atlantic
Ocean to lay their eggs. The baby eels then take three years to swim back to the European
rivers.
Hibernation: sleeping patterns seen in animals in which an organism sleeps during winters
to pass the period in sleeping condition.
Aestivation: sleeping pattern seen in animals in which an organism sleeps during summers
to pass the period in sleeping condition.
