1. Animal Adaptations

2. What is an adaptation?
A trait or modification that makes an animal better adapted to its environment.
Adaptations help animals survive in the wild!
Animals must adapt or face extinction!!!

3. Types of Adaptations: Structural (physical) Adaptations
2. Behavioral Adaptations

4. Structural Adaptations
body structures that allow an animal to find and consume food, defend itself, and to reproduce its species.
help an animal survive in its environment
Hey! I’m a walking stick. I look just like a stick you’d find on the ground.

5. Types of Structural Adaptations
Camouflage
Mimicry
Chemical Defenses
Body Coverings and Parts

6. Camouflage
Blending in with the environment

7. When do color changes occur?
1. Quick Change:
Changing body color within minutes to adapt to the color of your background.
Ex. Chameleon, Crab Spider

8. When do color changes occur?
2. Seasonal change:
Changes body color with the changing seasons
Brown in the summer, White in the winter, and a mixture of brown and white in the fall & spring
Ex. Arctic fox, snowshoe rabbit, rock ptarmigan

9. When do color changes occur?
Growth Change:
Changes body color as he/she gets older and better able to defend himself/herself.
molting occurs and they lose their baby coats
Ex. Fawn, harp seal

10. Kinds of Camouflage Disruptive Coloration
a color pattern that is thought to disrupt the perceived contour of the body or parts of the body, thereby making the animal more difficult to see.
Stripes and spots are used to break up an animals outline
Ex. Zebras, Tiger

11. Kinds of Camouflage Countershading
the dorsal side (upper side) of the animal is darker than the ventral (lower) side.
Such a color pattern provides camouflage for the animal when viewed from above, below, and even from the side.
Ex. Shorebirds, Red squirrel, Numerous species of fish

12. Kinds of Camouflage 3. Cryptic Coloration:
Coloration that allows an organism to match its background
therefore becoming less vulnerable to predation or recognition by prey.
Simplest kind of camouflage
Ex. Walking stick, horned lizard

13. Can you spot the nesting rock ptarmigan?

14. Can you spot the two katydids sitting on a tomato plant?

15. Katydids veins resemble leaves

16. Can you spot the pipefish in this bed of eelgrass?

17. Kinds of Camouflage Acryptic Coloration
The animal is not trying to conceal itself
The animal is advertising its presence
Animal has some negative quality it wants advertised
A sting, bite, poisonous
Warns potential predators with bright flashy colors
Ex. Red & Black (snake), orange &black (Monarch butterfly), yellow &black (bumble bee)
AKA
WARNING COLORATION

18. Kinds of Camouflage 5. Deceptive Markings
Markings or colors used to deceive (fool) a predator
Startle predator to give prey chance to escape
Ex. Moths, butterflies, butterfly fish

19. Mimicry looking or sounding like another living organism 2 Types:
1. Batesian Mimicry
2. Mullerian Mimicry

20. Batesian Mimicry
A harmless animal (the mimic) copies a known harmful animal (the model)
Ex. The poisonous coral snake serves as a model for the harmless king snake.

21. Mullerian Mimicry
Both model and mimic are equally harmful to predators
Advantage:
A single taste trial by a predator will secure future protection for two or more species
Ex. Monarch and Viceroy Butterfly
Monarch
Viceroy

22. One of these insects is a stinging honeybee and the other is a harmless fly that mimics the bee.
Is this an example of Batesian or Mullerian mimicry?

23. Chemical Defenses
There are two main ways animals can use chemicals to defend themselves.
Animals can
1. Synthesize toxin using their own metabolic
processes
2. Accumulate toxin from the food they eat.

24. Chemical Defenses- Synthesizing own Chemicals
Animals which synthesize their own toxin are able to convert chemical compounds in their body to a poison.
There are many amphibians that produce skin toxins.
The skin toxins are produced by special poison glands, usually located on the animal's back or throughout the skin.
The poison dart frog
has poison glands scattered all over its body.

25. Chemical Defenses- Synthesizing own Chemicals
In another example, the fire salamander makes a nerve poison, which it can squirt from glands on its back.

26. Chemical Defenses- Accumulate Toxin
Many animals accumulate toxin from their food rather than synthesizing it from scratch.
For example, the larvae of Monarch butterflies accumulate toxins from the plants they inhabit.  Birds that eat the Monarchs vomit and learn to avoid them in the future. 
Their bright coloration allows birds to remember and avoid them. 

27. Chemical Defense REMINDER:
Many organisms which are distasteful advertise this fact to predators by having bright body colors or markings, as if to say, “Notice me! I’m dangerous!”
Warning Coloration

28. Body coverings & parts claws, beaks, feet, armor plates, skulls, teeth
The elephant’s trunk is a physical adaptation that helps it to clean itself, eat, drink, and to pick things up.