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Title: "The Way We Live"
Galina Vassilyeva
Gymnasium # 10, Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan
E-mail:: sc10@ukg.kz
Language level of students: intermediate
Age group: 13-15
Time: approx. 30-40 minutes
Skills / aspects focus: Observing, understanding cause and effect, adding, role playing, using metric system.
Resources and materials: 200 small paper cups to represent animals ( prey ). They are marked on the bottom as follows:
100 cups marked S ( squirrel = 1 kg )
50 cups marked R ( rabbit= 2 kg )
30 cups marked P ( porcupine= 7,5 kg )
19 cups marked B ( beaver= 20 kg )
1 cup marked D ( deer= 75 kg )
Blindfold ( could use a scarf or bandana )
Credit published materials: Cougar Hunt was adapted with permission from Joan Wagner, Burnt Hills Middle School, NY. It is based on “Oh Deer!” activity developed by Project WILD 1983.
THIS ACTIVITY WAS USED IN ENO PROGRAM, FEBRUARY 2003
Procedure
Student will gain a better understanding of what is meant by carrying capacity when they act as predatory animals in a finite area and attempt to accumulate enough food to stay alive.
Objectives
Students will be able to
- Act out their roles as cougars trying to amass food for survival
- Calculate the amount of “prey” they gathered in kilograms
- Define carrying capacity and explain how it relates to animals
- Determine the similarities and differences between animal and human population growth patterns.
Pre-activity
Students should given the idea that every piece of land has a limited carrying capacity for the number of animals and/or humans it can support.
It’s been said that every person on the planet, around 6,2 billion of us, could fit into the state of Texas. But being able to fit a certain number of people into a space doesn’t mean they’d be able to live there for any length of time. We need more than just a certain amount of space to survive; we need things like food and water. There isn’t enough farmland or drinking water in Texas or in all of North America, for that matter, to support six billion people. Texas, the United States and the planet all have limits to how much they can give to support people. Every habitat does. This simulation helps students understand the concept of carrying capacity by having them act out the survival attempts of cougars living in an area with limited food resources
Activity
- Select a certain surface on which to spread the paper cups. This could be a counter or large table or the floor in one corner of a room or outdoors in the school yard. Set the cups upside down so the students can see the letters marked. Using the list above, write the names of the five types of prey and the number of kilograms of food provided by each on the chalkboard.
- Indicate the area where you have set out the cups. “This is the habitat of a population of cougars, or mountain lions. Each of you represents one cougar. Right now you will each try to find enough food in this habitat to survive for about a month, which is about 50 kg.”
- Select one student from the class and explain. “This cougar has been injured by tackling a big buck and now has a broken leg so that he/she will have to hunt on one leg.” Tell the student to hop.
- Select another student. “This cougar is blind due to an injury caused by a porcupine.” ( Give the student a scarf or bandana to use as a blindfold.)
- Select a third student. “This cougar is a female with two cubs and each cub needs 25 kg of food to live so if they are all going to survive, she needs to find 100 kg of food.”
- Indicate the list on the board and read it aloud to be sure the students understand what they’re looking for. Ask each student to set up a cougar den by selecting a small area where he/she will bring his/her prey. This could be a student’s desk or areas along the wall.
- Give students the following instructions: “Each cougar must walk into the habitat to hunt. ( Cougars don’t run down prey, they stalk it. ) When a cougar finds a prey animal, he or she picks it up and carries it to his or her den. Each cougar can only carry one prey animal at a time. Remember that in the wild, cougars don’t fight over prey, as a resulting injury mau kill them.” The students continue to repeat the process until the game is over, picking up just one prey species per trip.
- When all the paper cups have been gathered, the game is over and each student returns to his/her desk to calculate the quantity of food he/she gathered.
- Ask students to announce to the class the amount of food they gathered. On the chalkboard, record these numbers vertically in descending order. Then, draw a horizontal line at “50” to represent the amount needed to survive. Any cougars who gathered 50 kg or more would survive, while the others would not. Note: You may need to adjust the amount of prey needed to survive based on the number of students in your class. With the amount of prey available using 200 paper cups, about 10-18 cougars would survive. This would be an appropriate portion for a class of 25-30 students.
Post-Activity
Questions to be discussed:
How many kilograms did each cougar gather? How many cougars can survive in the habitat? If more cougars played the game, would the habitat support them? Why?
Answer: Having more predators than prey would mean fewer prey animals would survive to reproduce. Because more would be taken out than was being put back, the food supply wouldn’t be sufficient to support the cougars.
Questions to be discussed:
How many kilograms did the blind cougar gather? The injured cougar? The mother cougar ? What are the chances of her cubs surviving in this habitat? Can a blind or injured cougar survive in the wild? Who is the mother going to feed at first?
Answer: She will probably feed herself first to keep healthy so that she can tend to her cubs. If she doesn’t survive, they have no chance at all. Even if this litter doesn’t survive, perhaps the habitat will support healthy cubs in the future.
Questions to be discussed:
What do humans compete over?
Answer: As individuals, we compete mostly for money and the things it can buy. We also compete over means of becoming more fit to compete for money through things like education and jobs. As nations, we compete for resources like land, water, gasoline, oil, timber, minerals etc.
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