 My name is Caitlin Jericks. I'm the outreach coordinator here at the 4-H Center. For today's activity, we're gonna be talking to you a little bit about food chains and meeting some of our animal ambassadors that call the 4-H Center home. So a food chain is how energy flows in our environment. So basically it follows who is eating whom out in nature. Now there's gonna be different levels of food chains and these are actually called trophic levels. And they're all gonna begin with the sun, all living things on our planet need energy to live and to survive. And that actually starts with the sun. All right, so in our true first trophic level, we have our producers. So plants are an amazing example of a producer. So plants actually use the process of photosynthesis to convert the sun's energy into food for themselves. Just like all of the trees are doing around me right now. After our producers comes our primary consumers and our food chain and in our trophic level. So primary consumers, they're gonna actually eat those producers. So they're gonna be plant eating animals. And we call plant eating animals herbivores, just like a grasshopper would eat plants and other vegetation in the wild. So next in our food chain are going to be our secondary consumers. So these are gonna be animals that are actually either eating your primary consumers or those producing plants. So a secondary consumer can either be a carnivore. So just a meat eating animal or it can be an omnivore, an animal that eats both plants and meat. So our first example of a secondary consumer is going to be a mouse. So likes like to eat both plants and really anything that they can find in the wild. So anything from seeds, berries to even animals like your grasshoppers. All right, so mice are on the menu for lots of other animals, especially your snakes. So snakes are an example of the carnivorous secondary consumer. Now this is Serengeti. Serengeti has been a teacher here at the Forage Center for over 20 years. Serengeti is a corn snake. So corn snakes, they get their name because they've had quite the history of being found in farmers grain bins and in barns. Now they're not there though looking to eat the grain and the other vegetation. Instead, they want to prey upon all those rodents. So the mice and the rats that are going to be found there. So snakes actually do. Us and farmers are really important service as pest control have been reduced those and keep those in line of those rodent populations. Let's keep moving up in our food chain. At the top of our food chain we have our tertiary consumers. So these are going to be top predators that actually will eat both the primary and the secondary consumers just like a great horned owl would. Now this is Catalina. Catalina is an avian ambassador here at the Forage Center and she's actually what we call a human imprint. So she actually was taken out of the wild when she was really young illegally and she spent too much hot time under human care before she was finally released to a wildlife rehabilitator. And later on came to us because it's really unsafe to release imprinted animals back into the wild. Now great horned owls are going to be apex predators in their ecosystem. So they're going to eat anything and everything that they can get those sharp talons on including both mice and snakes. Did you notice how our food chain and our trophic levels actually made a pyramid? So this is actually because there's lots of energy at the bottom. And as organisms are eating other organisms there's less of those top level predators because there's only so much food and energy available for a few of those top level in the tertiary consumers. But there's lots of food available for those lower levels on the chain like your herbivores like our grasshopper. Food chains are a really simple way in learning how energy flows through our environment. But as most of us know that it's not always this simple like we saw with our food chain today and lots of organisms are out there eating different food items and different predators are eating them. But really nature is all connected and each level and animals actually really important on our food chain to keep nature in balanced. Now we've gotten over our food chain but we haven't really talked about what happens when something passes away. It doesn't just stay here forever. Instead other animals actually eat other dead things. Think about earthworms and vultures. These animals are called detravores. So they're actually gonna consume organic material and help start that breakdown process. And even further to help decompose like you learned about yesterday and Vess's composting video you're gonna have those organisms inside of the earth and in your compost bins. Sometimes like bacteria and fungi that are gonna even further break down those nutrients and put them back into the earth for our plant producers to help start that food chain all over. Now we challenge you 4-H'ers to go outside and to find your own backyard food chain by bringing out your writing utensil, your piece of paper and your observational skills. We wanna know in Friday's Zoom celebration what consumers and what producers you can find in your own backyards or neighborhoods. We're super excited to see you then.