Animal Adaptations Workshop

To get the most out of the Animal Adaptations Workshop at the Zoo, we suggest studying the following aspects at school before the visit:

To understand the students’ interests and increase motivation about the animals:

• Propose several challenges, such as for example discovering the purposes of some of the characteristics of certain animals, like elephants' trunks, tigers' stripes or the social behaviour of wolves, chimpanzees or humans. Then summarise what all the different students have discovered.
• Look for differences and similarities between dolphin and fish.
• Collect nature magazine articles that speak about this topic.
• Recommend a suitable documentary for them.
• Bring in videos, CDs or other materials on electronic supports about this subject.

To observe animals:

• Take an outing to a park, the countryside or the beach to watch animals in different environments and discover their adaptation solutions.
• Ask students who have a pet at home to bring it to school to observe some of its physical characteristics that are adaptation strategies, such as for example the separate toes of a dog, cats' whiskers and rabbits' teeth.

As specific objectives:

• Understanding of the concepts of adaptation, convergent evolution and ecological strategies.
• Discover the relationship between animals and their environments.
• Know how to deduce the adaptations of different animal species.