A habitat is the natural home of a plant or animal, where it finds food, water, shelter, and a place to raise its young. Forests, deserts, rivers, ponds, the sea, grasslands, and icy polar lands are all habitats. Adaptation means the special features of a body that help a living thing survive in its habitat. A camel is adapted to the hot, dry desert: it has long eyelashes to keep sand out of its eyes, nostrils that close in a sandstorm, wide padded feet that do not sink into sand, and a hump that stores fat so it can go many days without food.
A fish is adapted to water. It has gills to take in oxygen from the water, fins to steer, and a streamlined body that slips through water easily. A polar bear has thick fur, small ears to lose less heat, and big paws that work like snowshoes. A frog has webbed feet for swimming and long back legs for jumping. A giraffe has a long neck to reach high leaves. A monkey has a tail it can hold branches with. In the mangrove forests along the coast of Thailand, mudskipper fish can walk on the mud and breathe air, and the trees grow roots that stick up out of the water to breathe. When a habitat is destroyed, the animals adapted to it cannot easily live anywhere else.
Example: Choose one animal and draw it in its habitat. Label at least four body parts and write next to each one how that part helps the animal survive. Then imagine the same animal in a very different habitat and explain what problems it would have.