Where should animals live?

How does where you live influence who you are? What about animals? What kinds of adaptations have animals undergone to live where they do? What's the best place for different animals to live?

The Virginia Museum of Natural History wants to create a nature preserve. They hope to provide a home in Virginia for bald eagles, river otters, or black bears. You can help the museum! Pick one of the animals and research their habitat. Then design a habitat to for one of these animals. It has to be a habitat found in Virginia.

Here are some guidelines for your presentation to the Museum staff:

• Give examples of physical characteristics of the animal you select.
• Explain how the animal is adapted to the habitat you design.
• Give examples of how the habitat will help your animal gather and store food, find shelter, defend themselves, and raise it's young.
• You should be able to use terms like camouflage, mimicry, hibernation, migration, dormancy, instinct, and learned behavior. You may not need to use all of these terms.

Which animal will you pick?

Bald Eagle	Black Bear	River Otter

Research Documents

Read the following web page about the animal you picked. Take notes on the type of habitat it will require in Virginia.

• Bald Eagle Information: http://www.animalfactguide.com/animal-facts/bald-eagle/
• Black Bear Information: http://www.ngkids.co.uk/did-you-know/Black-bear-facts#
• River Otter Information: http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/content/kids/en_US/animals/river-otter/

Pick the Basic Habitat

Select one of the four habitat backgrounds that best matches the needs of the animal you selected. Click on the picture. This will download a PowerPoint file. You'll create the habitat in PowerPoint and describe why you picked what you did in the Notes.

Forest Habitat	Forest Habitat with Water
Grasslands	Swamp

Does your animal need additional plants or landscape features?

Copy the images of any of the plants or landscape features below and add them to your habitat, if necessary. Be sure to describe why you added these.

	Medium Trees		Medium Trees
Tall Trees	Palm Trees		Bamboo
Cave	Grasses		Marsh Grass
	Shrub/Bush	Shrub/Bush	Shrub/Bush	Shrub/Bush

What other animals should live in this habitat?

Copy the images of any of the animals below and add them to your habitat, if necessary. Be sure to describe why you added these.

Duck	Snake	Turtle
Fish	Rabbit	Frog

Scoring Checklist

You can download this checklist to guide your work.

How to copy and paste pictures

If you need a reminder of how to copy images from this page and paste them into PowerPoint, watch the video below.