Facts At Your Fingertips: The living world – Survival
Living things have a wide range of methods to find food, keep themselves safe from predators, and survive changing conditions.
These include living in large groups, moving from place to place, and even feeding off other animals.
Symbiosis
Sometimes two different species of plant or animal live with each other in a way that helps both of them. This is called symbiosis. Clownfish have a symbiotic partnership with anemones.
The anemones provide the fish with protection and food. In return, the fish defend the anemones from predators and keep them clean.
Parasites
Some living things, called parasites, live off others in a way that harms or even kills them. Head lice live in human hair and feed on our blood. They do not kill us, but they make our scalps very itchy.
Safety in numbers
Some animals travel together in large groups. This makes it harder for predators to catch them and may also help them catch their own food.
Fish such as herring form huge groups, called schools, that may number hundreds of millions of individuals.
Migration
Animals may move from one region to another to find food or places to reproduce. This is called migration.
Monarch butterflies migrate from Canada to Mexico every fall and back again every spring. Each migration takes three or four generations, so no individual insect survives the whole trip.