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YEAR 5: LIVING THINGS &
THEIR HABITATS
Registered charity number 1153740
1. WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES IN THE LIFE CYCLES OF
A MAMMAL, AN AMPHIBIAN, AN INSECT & A BIRD?

Photo: Mark Dumont

 Mammal Life Cycle
Before
Birth
Photo: owlana

Young
Photo: Albuquerque ioPark
Photo: Lance + Erin

Adult
Photo: Michele Zanin
 Nearly all mammals give birth to live young.
Mammal young are similar to the parents, just
smaller.

Photo: Mark Dumont Photo: Bethan Phillips

There are only two egg-laying mammals in the
world
Spiny anteater

Photo: Ian Sanderson

Duck-
billed
platypu
s

Photo: Alan Couch

 Hamsters have a
gestation period of
just 16-23 days

Photo: HelloMokona

Elephants have the

longest gestation
period of all
mammals – about
23 months. That’s Photo: Albuquerque BioPark
 Female mammals
have mammary
glands that produce
milk to feed their
young

Photo: Alan Harris

Photo: bzd1
 Mammal life expectancy varies hugely

The Harvest Mouse

lives for around 2.5
years.

Photo: Chris Parker

The Bowhead Whale

can live for over 100
years & it is thought
that one lived for over
Photo: Blatant World
200 years!
 The human life cycle: from newborn baby, to child, to adult, to
old age

Photo: Allie Osmar Siarto Photo: Ashok Saravanan.Ay

Photo: Toms Baugis Photo: Eric Montfort

 The Human Life Cycle and Life
Expectancy
Before
Baby Toddler Child Teenager Adult Old Age Death
birth

In the UK, average life

expectancy is 81 years.

In Sierra Leone, Africa it is only

54 years.

Can you think of reasons for this

difference?
When a baby kangaroo is born, it crawls into its
mother’s pouch where it suckles, grows and
develops

Photo: Tatters
 This joey is about
6 months old and
can now climb
out of his
mother’s pouch
to spend time
exercising and
eating.

Photo: Tambako The Jaguar

 Pregnant polar bears make a den in the snow
before their cubs are born blind, small and
helpless. They start suckling straight away and
grow quickly.

Photo: Alaska Region U.S. Fish & Wildlife

When the cubs are 3-4 months old, they emerge
from the den with their mother to go hunting.

Photo: trasroid
 Bird Life Cycle

Before
birth
Photo: brittgow

Young
Photo: Anne Petersen

Parent
Photo: Steven Johnson
Chicks grow inside eggs, outside of the
mother’s body, getting their nutrition
from the yolk
Photo: rabbit_mage
Parent birds sit on their eggs to keep them warm, so that
the chicks inside develop properly – this is called
incubation.

Photo: Eric Begin

 A baby chick is
hatching in this
picture – it is
called a
hatchling.

Photo: William Bigelis

 This duckling is only a day old and still has its egg tooth – it used
this to hatch out of the egg and it will drop off in a few days

Egg tooth

Photo: Daniela
Parent birds look after their young. Most chicks can’t walk
or fly straight away, so the mother feeds them in their
nest.

Photo: Tim Samoff

 Some birds migrate a long way as part of their
lifecycle. They often migrate to find food and usually
move in flocks.

Photo: Alaska Region U.S. Fish and Wildlife

In its lifetime (about 30
years) the Arctic Tern can
migrate up to 1.5 million
miles - that’s equal to
three trips to the moon
and back!

Photo: Lindsay Robinson

Kiwis lay eggs 6 times larger than normal for a bird of their size. The
baby can take up to 3 days to hatch from them, as they have no egg
tooth.

Photo: Smithsonian’s National Zoo

 Penguin parents share
the caring for the eggs
and chicks. This king
penguin is incubating
an egg.

Photo: Chris Pearson

Amphibian life cycle
Born (either alive
from mother or
hatched from eggs) Amphibians go
through a process
called
Spend childhood metamorphosis. By
under water, the time they are
breathing with gills
adults they look
completely different
from how they did
Grow into adults when they were
and move to land,
breathing with lungs born.
A frog lays eggs in a blob of clear jelly called frogspawn

Photo: Dave Harrison

The eggs hatch into tadpoles. They can swim
very well using their wriggly tails & breathe
through gills

Photo: Rob
6 weeks after
hatching the
tadpoles grow
hind legs, but
are still tiny.

They will soon

grow front legs
and start to
breathe through
their lungs.Photo: Ray Morris
A few weeks after
growing legs the tadpole
develops into a small
froglet

Photo: Darrell Birkett Photo: Kit

 The froglet grows into a large adult
frog. After 2 years it will lay eggs of its
own and start the cycle again

Most frogs do not look

after their offspring
Photo: Peter Van den Bossche
Insect Life Cycle

Egg Unborn stage

Young stage
Larva Eat lots
Usually have soft bodies

Inactive stage
Pupa No eating
Seal themselves in protective
casing & transform into adults

Adult Final breeding stage

Emerge fully grown, often with
wings
The female Monarch butterfly lays her eggs
and inside each egg a caterpillar starts to
grow

Photo: Brenda Reamy

 As it grows, a caterpillar can shed its skin 4 or 5 times. When fully
grown it can be over 100 times larger than when it emerged from the
egg!

This caterpillar
hatched first,
has grown and
shed more skins
than the smaller
Photo: Distant Hill Gardens
one.
When fully grown, the caterpillar forms itself
into a chrysalis. Inside a transformation is
taking place!

Photo: Martin LeBar Photo: Martin LeBar

 The newly
emerged, damp
Monarch
butterfly is still
clinging to the
empty shell of
the chrysalis

Photo: Sid Mosdell

The new
Monarch
Butterfly takes
to the air in
search of
flowers to feed
on

Photo: Martin LeBar

 Peacock Butterfly

Photo: gailhampshire Photo: Ian Harvey

Phoyo:Robert Pittman

Photo: Dean Morley

Speckled Wood
 Incomplete Metamorphosis
About 10% of insects do not have a pupal form and
only have three stages in their life cycle.

Egg
Insects with
incomplete
metamorphosi
s: The nymph looks like the
Nymph adult but lack features
such as wings
Dragonfly

Grasshopper

Locust Adult
Cockroach
2.HOW DO ANIMALS
REPRODUCE?

Photo: Michelle Friswell

Can you see the family
resemblance?

Sexual
reproduction
produces offspring
that resemble the
parents, but are
not identical to
them.

Photo: Derek K. Miller

External Fertilisation
In most fish and
water dwelling
animals, offspring
are fertilised
outside the
female’s body.

Photo: Spike Stitch

The female frog releases thousands of unfertilised eggs into the water at
the same time that the male releases his sperm – they combine to create
frogspawn

Photo: Sarah
Tuna fish eggs are fertilised in the water and young fish hatch from them

Photo: The AnimalDay.org

 Internal Fertilisation
For most animals which
live on land, offspring
are fertilised inside the
mother’s body. There
are 3 ways this can
happen:

1. The young develop

inside the female and
are born alive (almost all
mammals).
Photo: Jacob Botter
 Human Reproduction
A human baby grows inside
the mother for about 9
months before being born.

Photo: Jon Large

Half of a baby’s
genetic material is
from the mother and
half from the father.
Photo: Matt Johnson
2. In some animals the fertilised eggs are
laid outside the female’s body and develop
there, getting nourishment from the yolk of
the egg.

Photo: The TerraMar Project

 Penguin eggs are fertilised inside the mother. A month
later she lays 1 or 2 eggs that take about 34-35 days to
hatch.

Photo: Chris Pearson Photo: Christopher Michel

 3. In some animals the eggs are held within the female
and hatch as they are laid, making it resemble live birth.

Madagascan Hissing
Cockroach
The female creates a cocoon-like
egg case and carries it inside her
body until the eggs hatch. She
then bears as many as 60 nymph
roaches.

Photo: Matt Reinbold

 The eggs of the female fruit fly are fertilised inside her. She lays
eggs and after a few days, they hatch into maggots (or larvae).

fruit fly
egg These larvae soon
transform from fat maggots
to pupa and then to adult
winged insects that are
ready to reproduce.
Photo: Carolina Biological Supply Company

Photo: Carolina Biological Supply Company

fruit fly adult fruit

pupa fly

Do you remember the word we

use to describe this
transformation?
Photo: Christophe Quintin
 3. HOW HAS THE WORK OF
NATURALISTS AND ANIMAL
BEHAVIOURISTS CONTRIBUTED TO
OUR UNDERTSANDING OF THE
NATURAL WORLD?

Photo: James Illingworth

What can we study about animal
behaviour?

Feeding

Reproducing Sleeping

Animal
Behaviour
Finding/building
Learning shelters

Fighting Playing
 Jane Goodall (1934 - ), Animal
Behaviourist
Photo: World Bank Photo Collection

Jane Goodall is one of a

small number of people who
have ever been accepted
into a chimpanzee
community.

She showed that chimps

have individual
personalities and
experience emotions.
 Naturalists
Here are just a few naturalists who have made a valuable
contribution to our understanding of the natural world.

Charles
Darwin

David Steve
Attenborough Backshall

Famous
Naturalists

Terri Irwin Steve Irwin

Alexander von
Humboldt
 Charles Darwin (1809-1882),
Naturalist
Charles Darwin’s theory of
evolution, explained in his 1859
book ‘On the Origin of Species’,
completely changed scientific
thinking on how species
Photo: Shehal Joseph developed.

Photo: Bryan Wright

 David Attenborough (1926- ),
Naturalist
By the age of 7, David
Attenborough had already
created his own ”museum”
of bird eggs and ancient
fossils.

Photo: Jon King

Could you be a
famous naturalist
when you are
older? Photo: RubyGoes
 Steve Backshall (1973 - ),
Naturalist
For BBC TV’s Deadly 60, Steve travelled 6
continents in 6 months to find 60 of the
deadliest creatures on the planet.

YPTE is very lucky to have Steve Backshall as

a President; he regularly attends our prize
giving ceremonies and other events.
Photo: David Farquhar
 Sensory Mapping
Blackbir
Ants d
crawling in singing
Bee buzzing grass

Wind
Woodlice under Me blowing in
rock
trees

Smell of freshly
cut grass

Arrow denotes
Chaffinch singing the direction the
person is facing
in tree
 To find out more, please visit
ypte.org.uk
Registered charity number 1153740
Creating a better future by inspiring young people to look after our world
 Credits
YPTE would like to thank all the amazing
photographers on Flickr who allow the use of
their photos for non-commercial purposes.

Your photos are helping young people to learn

more about environmental issues. We couldn’t
have created this presentation without you!