Preparing You For Your Education Session:
Interactive Food Webs
Location: Lions Learning Space
Duration: 45-50 minutes
Please note: Teachers and other adults are responsible for accompanying the pupils during the sessions and for their behaviour
and conduct throughout their visit. Regrettably, if a reasonable standard of behaviour is not met the Education Officer will terminate the session
Curriculum links
National Curriculum
KS3 Science
Biology: Interactions and interdependencies
Working Scientifically: Experimental Skills and Investigations
Session content
Students will explore what a food web is and how all the species
in an ecosystem are dependent on each other. Using an
interactive iPad app, students will have the opportunity to build
their own food web using the Gir Forest as the ecosystem.
Students will then be encouraged to source information and
make predictions about how the ecosystem might change if a
particular species declines in number. We’ll finish by focussing
on a real-life conservation case study that ZSL are involved to
help protect vultures in India.
During the session pupils
will:
Sit, listen, answer and ask
questions
 Engage in whole-group activities
 Work in small groups to build
food webs, and report their
findings to the class
 Make predictions using
information from the food web

Using the Zoo to support this session
The photocopiable worksheet on the reverse of this page encourages pupils to make observations of some
of the Zoo’s endangered animals and think about the interdependence of life on Earth.
During the session we explore the concept of food webs and interdependence. You may wish to visit some
of these exhibits on your way around the Zoo and think about how different species might be dependent
on one another:
What you can see
Lions, langurs and vultures
Location
Land of the Lions
Rainforest animals (monkeys, birds, sloths, insects)
Rainforest Life
Invertebrates, vertebrates and invasive species
BUGS house
Predators and prey
Into Africa
Producers, consumers and predators
Aquarium
Suggested classroom activity (for before or after your visit)
Give each student in the class a native British animal to represent. Ask each student to do some
independent research into what their animal eats. Then, use lengths of string or ribbon to link the
‘animals’ together that eat each other. This will represent a native, British food web. As an extension,
ask students to predict what will happen if certain species are removed from the food web.
2016/2017
www.zsl.org/education
Visit Gorilla Kingdom (map ref. F4)
Which gorillas can you see today? Can you name them?
Green Team
challenge
Wild animals and their habitats are
disappearing because of the actions
of humans. A Zoo can help to save
and protect wildlife.
Why are Gorillas disappearing from the wild?
Look in the Field Station near the gorilla statues.
Give one thing that we can do to help save wild gorillas.
As you walk around the Zoo today,
think about these questions and try to
find the answers.
Think of two ways that a Zoo can help to protect wild animals.
Visit the B.U.G.S! house (map ref. C7)
Look at the variety of animals. All animals are linked in food chains and webs. Every animal is important to our
planet as it has its own job to do or role to play.
Find 3 animals and write down their job or role. e.g. spiders help to reduce the number of flies by eating them.
Animal
Job or role
Now try and make your own food chain with some of the animals you’ve seen in this building.
Predator
Secondary Consumer
Primary Consumer
Producer
2016/2017
www.zsl.org/education