Hi –
This week in Science, in honor of the letter, ‘C,’ we learned about how some creatures use camouflage to hide from their predators and prey.
To begin, we looked at two objects – a brown pinto bean and a white navy bean.
Then, each child was given an empty cup and a container filled with gravel,
10 pinto beans and 10 navy beans.
We had 30 seconds to pick the beans out of the containers and place them in our cups.
When we were done, we graphed our results. We put all of the pinto beans from our cups in one column and all of the navy beans in the other.
Most people found more brown beans than white ones.
The white beans were hard to see because they looked a lot like the gravel.
Next, we looked at a picture of two foxes in the snow.
The white (arctic) fox in the snow was like a white navy bean in the gravel and the brownish (red) fox was like a pinto bean. The arctic fox could hide in the snow because it blended into the surroundings. That’s called ‘camouflage.’ In the summer its fur changes color so that it blends in better with the muddy ground.
Other animals do similar things. For example, this ptarmigan is brown in the summer,
then turns white in the winter when it lives under the snow on the ground.
In the spring and fall it molts, leaving it with half brown, half white feathers for a short time as it transitions to the next season:
We turned our attention to moths. Here are moths that are fairly well camouflaged:
Here is a moth that is not well camouflaged,
but, if it landed on a tree trunk instead of grass, it would be able to hide much more easily.
We made our own camouflaged moths. We had to make the moth and the ‘tree trunk’ match so that the moth could hide.
Where did all the moths go?
Great job everyone!
See you next week,
Morah Elaine
Beth Shalom Early Learning Center 