Science Reflection

In class, we did an activity on predator, and prey. The exercise included elk, aspen, wolves, and other animals. The activity was based on Yellowstone National Park. First, this activity was a fun hands on experience. The elk would eat the aspen, and then wolves would come to eat the elk. Each animal was a student in the class. During this activity, I was an elk, and it showed that they were easily found from wolves. Also, to make this activity more realistic, the elk had to go find plastic, green leaves around the classroom. Some were more hidden than others, but to survive we needed two. As more people participated, finding leaves started to become harder. Towards the end of the activity we did in class, two wolves had to catch an elk before they got their leaves. We recorded the amount of wolves, elk and other animals at the end of class.
In this class activity, I learned a lot, while having lots of fun at the same time. I think the purpose of this is to learn about food webs, as well as predator and prey. I learned that if you take out one animal in an area, it changes many things. for example, If you take out the wolf in this situation, there would more more elk, to eat the aspen trees. This means that there wouldn't be as many aspen leaves for the other animals around the park. This activity was also very fun, because we got be apart of it, and it was easier to see what goes on, when people act it out. Also, when we added more and more people to the exercise it got more interesting, and became more of a challenge.