Why a food web puzzle?

A food chain is a list of who eats who. On paper it is a row of names and arrows, and the arrows are easy to get backwards. Here you draw each arrow yourself. When an arrow is right, energy from the Sun flows along it and the next card lights up. When it is wrong, the game tells you why.

All the plants and animals live in Singapore, in a garden, a lake, a mangrove and a forest. Every feeding link a level asks for comes from a named source, such as National Parks Board species pages, the Biodiversity of Singapore records supported by the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, or university research.

What it practises

• Reading and drawing food chains and food webs.
• Arrow direction. Each arrow points from the food to the eater, which is the way energy flows.
• The Sun as the start of the energy pathway, with plants as producers.
• Sorting producers, consumers and decomposers.
• Thinking through what happens to a food web when one animal is gone.

In Singapore’s 2023 primary science syllabus, food chains and food webs sit in the Primary 6 topic Interactions within the Environment. The syllabus asks pupils to show the energy pathway from the Sun through living things and to name the roles of producers, consumers, predators and prey. Food webs are part of the Standard course. The Foundation course covers food chains. The “what if” puzzles go a step further than the syllabus asks.

A bit of real science

Plants make their own food using light from the Sun, so every food chain starts with a plant. Animals get their energy by eating. Decomposers such as fungi and bacteria break down dead plants and animals.

The mangrove levels are set in a place like Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve. Tree-climbing crabs there eat mangrove leaves, and kingfishers and monitor lizards eat the crabs. Archerfish knock insects off leaves with a jet of water. From about August to April, migratory shorebirds such as the whimbrel stop to feed on the mudflats. A whimbrel’s long, curved bill pulls worms and fiddler crabs out of the mud.

In the forest, colugos glide between trees at night to eat leaves. Singapore’s biodiversity records list reticulated pythons and changeable hawk-eagles among the animals that eat them.

Some well-known links are less certain than they seem. Guppies are often put in ponds and drains to eat mosquito larvae. Yet a 2018 study of wild guppies found their diet was mostly algae and bits of dead matter. So in this game, a guppy eating mosquito larvae counts as a bonus link. It is allowed, but no level needs it. Other bonus links work the same way. They happen in real life, but less often.

How to play

• Tap a card to pick it and read about it. Then tap the animal that eats it to draw an arrow.
• Start from the Sun. Tap the Sun, then a plant.
• Tap an arrow to rub it out.
• Each level has a goal: light up every card, find every feeding link, or build a chain of a set length. Some levels ask you to sort cards into baskets, rub out wrong arrows, or guess what happens when one animal disappears.
• A wrong arrow counts as an oops. Stars per level: ★★★ with no oops, ★★ with a few, ★ for finishing.
• There are 44 levels in five habitats. In the last set, Big webs, card notes stay hidden until you get one wrong.
• Each living thing you link goes into your field guide. Earn 3 stickers for your QuickBOP sticker book.

Tips

Say it out loud. Read an arrow as “is eaten by”. Grass is eaten by the grasshopper, so the arrow goes from grass to grasshopper.

Work upwards. Light the plants first, then the plant eaters, then the hunters. A card can only light up if its food is already lit.

Read the notes. A note like “eats insects” means every insect on the board counts. Think about which cards are insects.

For “what if” puzzles, follow the arrows. If an animal’s only food is gone, there will be fewer of it. If its only hunter is gone, there will be more. Then take one more step along the chain. Real habitats are messier than this, because animals can move or switch food, so the game only asks about cases where the answer is clear.

Your turn

The Sun is up and the garden is waiting. Tap the Sun, tap the grass, and see where the energy goes.