Untitled Document

Making Your Land Animals Page

Now that you have some plants out on land, it is time to let the animals follow!

Remember: you will let your primitive animal evolve to live in three different biospheres.

All group members should work on the same three biospheres!

Check Biomes to review the different environments.

Step 1: Examine Your Aquatic Animals

Look at your aquatic animals. Which ones have structures that could evolve into organs that would be useful on land?

To help your thinking, discuss this table for earth animals with your group members:

Animal in Ocean	Descendents on Land?	On Land? Why or Why not? List Important Features
water snail	land snails	Yes. Shell protects from dehydration, predators, sunlight
clam
jelly fish
fish	all vertebrates
crab
starfish
octopus

Step 2: Choose the aquatic animal that you will work with.

Get the graphics of the animal and put them into your graphics program. Start playing with the images.

Example: Here is a Jumping Muncher from my Water Animals page:

See how I manipulate the image to help with the evolution process.

Shallow Ocean Water Environment

Animal
Environment
Adaptations

Warm, shallow ocean water with rocks to hide among and small plants to eat.
The tail of the Jumping Muncher is tucked under its body, and can be used to push the animal forward quickly.
The mouth has littly raspy plates for scraping off plant pieces.

The little herbivore is now about two inches long.

It can see movement in the environment, and has eye spots in front and on the sides so it sees its predators.

Tidal Zone Environment

Tidal zone, sometimes above water, sometimes not.
Usually found where there are rocks and tide pools.
Tide Splat Darker skin protects it from the sunlight and makes it less conspicuous.
Larger mouth can deal with tougher plants.

Oxygen absorbed by lining of mouth and throat and through the skin. Weight is one ounce.

Diet now includes small dead animals.

Eye spots continue but dominant eyes are in front.

Early Rain Forest Environment

Rainy areas with low undergrowth and mosses.

Many small pools and streams.

Looper is more chunky, with thicker body to hold food better. The tail is much stronger and the looper can jump quite far. The mouth is larger and stronger. The looper is about 5 inches long. It eats plants, dead animals, and sometimes captures insects.

Reproduction continues to be in a pond or the ocean where eggs are laid and abandoned.

Rain Forest Matures

Many tall trees and giant reeds

Heavy shade at ground level. Stalker with no plants to eat, the Looper evolved into a savage hunter of small animals and insects on the ground of the rain forest. It also still eats fallen fruits. Loopers grow up to 10 inches long, and their powerful tails allow them to leap up to three feet. Their mouths, which are stronger, can now bite and hold prey. Their large eyes allow them to detect movement all around them.

Grassland Biome

Rolling green plains covered with plants provide food for herbivores of many sizes.
A number of species of the Trunk Mouth roam the planet. At first trunk mouths lived in the rain forests, eating insects and small animals: later, as their legs got longer, they ventured out onto the grasslands.

The eyes and mouth of these animals are mounted in the bones that also support the front limbs, so the mouth developed into a trunk-like structure with a powerful suction action. This allowed the limbs to get longer and the animal to move more quickly. This Trunk Mouth is about 3 feet high.

Reproduction continues to be in the water. As the Grasslands often have dry summers, the numbers of Trunk Mouths are kept in check by intermittent droughts which dry up many of the pools necessary for their reproduction.

Desert Biome

In the hot deserts temperatures range between 130 Degrees Fahrenheit during the day and readings in the low 60's at night We almost missed the Head Lighter. This small twilight- feeding animal lives in the desert. Its huge eyes make it well able to see during the short time after sundown when temperatures are still high enough to allow it to feed. It eats cactus- like plants, delicately probing through the thorns with its trunk-like mouth. During the day and in the coolness of the night it takes refuge in burrows It is only about 9 inches long.

3. Make a diagram of the relationships of the species to each other.

Example: chart of species relationships

Remember that characteristics have to be developed.

You cannot have a lobster suddenly develop an interior skeleton with a backbone. Every feature has to develop from something that already exists.

Notice that my invented animals above all have a basic three limbed structure and eyes all over the body. They are cold blooded and do not have ears or wings. It is probably too late for them to evolve these characteristics.

4. You can also do a Table to show How Many KiloCalories your animals need.

Example:

Table of Animal Facts
Animal	Weight	KiloCalories Needed Per Day Caloric Needs of Animals Divide by 10 for cold blooded	KiloCalories if you eat it! Estimate 50 KCal per ounce	Herbivore or Carnivore?	Hot or Cold Blooded?
Tide Splat	1 ounce	1 KiloCalories	50 KiloCalories	Herbivore	Cold
Looper	6 ounces	6 KiloCalories	300 KiloCalories	mostly plants	Cold
Trunk Mouth	30 pounds	90 KiloCalories	24,000 KiloCalories	Carnivore	Cold
Stalker	3 Pounds	13.5 KiloCalories	2,400 KiloCalories	Carnivore	Cold
Head Lighter	1 pound	4.5 KiloCalories	800 KiloCalories	Herbivore	Cold