Life Around Us
Beaks, claws and fins
Read an animal's body like a set of tools: work out from a beak, a claw, a snout or a foot what its owner eats and where it gets about.
Sarthak pointed at a bird with a long tail and a big curved beak, and Abha Didi named it: a hornbill. Then she said something that turns a walk in a forest into detective work. Look at a bird's beak and its claws, and you can make a good guess at what it eats — before it has taken a single bite in front of you.
A beak is a tool
Try picking up a plate of grains, berries, nuts and pieces of fruit using a spoon, then a toothpick, then a pair of sticks. Each tool is easy for one of those foods and hopeless for another. Beaks are the same, and so is a trunk, a snout or a webbed foot: the shape follows the job.
Have a play
A turtle in the shallows, with its shell, its head and its spread feet.
Tap any part of the picture.
Worked example
Two birds are sitting in the same tree. One has a hooked beak that ends in a point; the other has a beak as thin as a straw. Are they after the same food?
Work out what a hook is good for. A hook holds on to something that is trying to get away, and a point tears.
So that beak belongs to a bird that deals with food which moves and has to be pulled apart.
Try it together
Let us set out the rule behind those guesses, together.
The chapter states it plainly over two pages, and it is worth putting into your own words.
1.Birds use two body parts for eating and for other work. One of them is the beak. What is the other?
Have a go
Your turn. An elephant is not a bird, but it has its own tool. What does the chapter say its long trunk is for?
Ready to practise?
Eight questions on what you have just read. Nothing is timed, and you can play as many times as you like.