Rainforest Live '97 Topic Essays from Queensland, Australia Faculty and Student Topic Essays

  From the week ending March 21, 1997

Food Webs
by Becky Curtis

Each day we make many choices about what we are going to eat. Most of our decisions are based on what food is available. The same holds true for animals living in the rainforest. Our decisions are usually based on what we bought at the grocery store, animals eat food from that is available in the rainforest. Although it seems quite simple as to how things work, it is a pretty complex system. In the movie The Lion King, Mufasa explains to Simba the circle of life with this example: antelope eat grass, lions eat antelope and lions die and the nutrients are returned to the grass and the cycle starts over from there.

It is the same with all the animals found in the forest. The food webs are dependent on the food chain. The "higher" animals eat "lower" animals so the number of higher animals that can survive depends on the number of lower animals that are available for them to eat. It is for this reason that it is so important to preserve all the animals of the rainforest. Causing just one species to become extinct may not seem like it will make a difference but that one species may be the only source of food for other animals. The cycle continues from one level down through all the levels that exist in the chain. Food webs have a delicate balance that must be kept in order for the well being of the entire cycle of nature.

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