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Who eats whom in a meadow? Take one species away and see what happens to the rest.
Food Web lab · Last updated: 16 October 2026
Who eats whom in a meadow? In this 3D lab, you map the links between plants, plant-eaters and predators, then take one species away to see what happens to the rest. It shows why every living thing in a habitat matters, even the ones we rarely notice.
What you'll discover
- Energy enters a food web through plants and passes to the animals that eat them, then to their predators.
- Removing one species can make some populations boom and others crash, far beyond its own food chain.
- Only a small part of the energy at each level reaches the next, so there are fewer animals at the top.
The science in plain words
A food chain shows one path of feeding, such as grass eaten by a grasshopper, eaten by a frog, eaten by a snake. Real habitats are more tangled: most animals eat several kinds of food and are eaten by several predators, so the chains join into a food web.
Every food web starts with producers, usually green plants, which capture energy from sunlight by photosynthesis. Herbivores such as rabbits and grasshoppers are primary consumers. Carnivores that eat them are secondary consumers, and top predators such as hawks and foxes sit higher still. Decomposers, including fungi, bacteria and earthworms, break down dead material from every level and return nutrients to the soil. Each feeding level is called a trophic level.
Only about 10 per cent of the energy at one trophic level is passed on to the next, because most is used for living and lost as heat. That is why there are far more plants than rabbits, and far more rabbits than foxes. Because everything is linked, removing a single species can have surprising effects. Take away a predator and its prey may multiply until they strip their food plants, which then harms other animals that depend on those plants.
Where it fits
Common questions
What is the difference between a food chain and a food web?
A food chain is a single line showing who eats whom, such as grass to rabbit to fox. A food web joins many food chains together to show all the feeding links in a habitat. Food webs are more realistic because most animals eat, and are eaten by, more than one species.
What happens if one animal is removed from a food web?
Its prey may increase because nothing is eating them, while its predators may go hungry and decline. These changes spread through the web. For example, losing a predator can let plant-eaters multiply and overgraze, which harms plants and every other animal that depends on them.
Why are there fewer animals at the top of a food chain?
At each step only about a tenth of the energy is passed on, because animals use most of what they eat to move, keep warm and stay alive. By the top of the chain there is too little energy left to support many large predators.
Related labs
- Ecosystem Balance: Can plants and animals live for weeks in a sealed jar? Where does their oxygen come from?
- Predator-Prey Dynamics: Why do hare and lynx numbers boom and crash again and again?
- Biodiversity Index: How do ecologists measure how varied a meadow is? Throw some quadrats and count.
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Try it yourself
The Food Web lab is one of the interactive 3D science labs inside Taz. Change one thing, predict what will happen, then run it and watch. Labs open after you sign in.