Music All this gear helps adapt me to a water environment.

This snorkel lets me breathe underwater.

This mask helps me to see underwater.

And these fins help me swim faster.

This is how Nature Works!

Theme Music Music Living things don't put on gear to adapt to their environments.

Instead, over many generations, the features that help them survive in their environment are passed on.

Eventually, the whole group has the characteristics that allow them to survive and reproduce in their environment.

Characteristics to help an organism survive and reproduce are called adaptations.

Adaptations may first happen by chance, but creatures that have them tend to do a little better and have more young.

So generation after generation, characteristics that make an organism better suited to its environment are more likely to be passed on.

Over time, more and more individuals in a group of organisms have the adaptation.

To see under water and cover my nose, I had to put on this mask.

Beavers have adaptations for that.

A membrane over their eyes and nose plugs.

Most features that you can see are adaptations.

Adaptations help animals hide, avoid predators, catch prey, find food, and survive harsh weather.

Living things can have two kinds of adaptations.

Organisms’ physical adaptations to their environments are called structural adaptations.

For example, the bullfrog’s camouflage helps it hide and its strong leg muscles make it a great jumper.

The great horned owl’s excellent hearing and night vision help it locate prey in the dark.

Their sharp talons catch and hold prey, and their curved beaks help them tear food apart.

Porcupines have structural adaptations that make them painful to catch.

Their quills are thick, loosely attached hairs with tiny barbs at their tips.

Porcupines can't shoot their quills.

They come out easily when jumped on or bitten.

Sometimes the porcupine swats its attacker with its tail.

When a porcupine is threatened, it turns its back.

This protects its belly and face, which don't have quills.

Turning its back to an attacker and swatting with its tail are behavioral adaptations The way an animal acts helps it survive in its environment.

These actions are called behavioral adaptations.

Music Other behavioral adaptations help animals survive harsh conditions.

For example, the migration of songbirds in the fall to find food.

Birds that don't migrate, like the wild turkey, have behavioral adaptations for dealing with snow.

They dig through snow to find acorns and other seeds.

Many animals have behaviors that help them survive winter conditions.

Sometimes an animal uses a combination of structural and behavioral adaptations.

Box turtle shells protect the turtle from predators.

When the turtle is threatened, it pulls in its head and legs.

Snapping turtles don't have a strong bottom shells to protect their legs and tail.

So they swim away when threatened.

If threatened on land, they defend themselves by snapping with a long neck and powerful beak.

Adaptations help animals survive, thrive, and reproduce in their environments.

Adaptations have to do with a way an animal is made, the way it acts, or a combination of the two.

But one way or another, the animals that survive in a particular environment are the ones with adaptations to that environment.

When I get back to the nature center, I'll ask Dave more about adaptations.

But for now, I'm going back in the water.

Music Thanks a lot, Patrice, for helping me with the props.

We've got a couple of minutes here before the, the mini talk is supposed to start.

You want to see them?

I'll let you take them out of here.

Music So what things help him from being eaten?

Actually, opossums have a lot of behavioral adaptations.

If they do detect danger with their ears, they sometimes can scurry into a hole underground or maybe even climb up a tree.

But if they can't get to one of those places like that, then they have a couple other things up their sleeve.

They have a behavioral adaptation that some people refer to as being called playing possum.

Have you ever heard that?

No.

Some people might call it playing dead.

What it is, is probably a way for them just to shut their system down and actually take on the appearance of being dead.

They lay on their sides, close their eyes, bite their tongue, and if an animal then picks them up and shakes them, they actually are limp, just like they'd be when they're dead.

And they may stay like that for a couple of minutes or even longer.

But if the animal gets distracted, that attacked them, you know, it might give them an opportunity to come to and and get away.

So, you know, in a sense, all of those things are behavioral adaptations that would help a possum perhaps survive.

I've always heard people say that opossums hang by their tail.

Is that true?

They have a great tail if you see it hanging over the side here a little bit.

They've got what's called a prehensile tail.

But by the time opossums get this large or even larger, because this one isn't even a full grown one, their weight is too heavy for them to really support themselves by their tail.

How do they find food?

Possums basically find everything with their nose.

If you look at their nose.

it’s way out on the tip.

They have very good hearing.

But that's probably only good for detecting danger so that they don't become food for somebody else.

What I've got here, I've got some little pieces of fruit.

I got some wild grapes here that I can set out.

And I also have a little bit of meat.

Oops.

I guess he likes grapes.

So their structural adaptations are important for their survival, right?

Right.

Not only their structural adaptations, but also their behavioral adaptations as well.

You know, some adaptations, like their tail, are really easy to see.

And it's kind of a unique structural adaptation I'll certainly agree.

But you know what.

There's another animal that has a really unique structural adaptation in its tail.

It's got some behavioral adaptations that are interesting as well.

You know what that animal is?

The beaver.

Music If you want to see a beaver, you have to be really quiet.

They don't like surprises.

Find a comfortable place downwind so the beaver doesn't pick up your scent.

Then settle in and wait.

Beavers are the largest rodents in North America.

Rodents have sharp, flat front teeth called incisors that are good for gnawing.

Mice, squirrels, and porcupines are also rodents.

Beavers use their teeth to cut down and snip off branches they need to build their lodges and dams.

The beaver’s front teeth grow throughout their lives.

This is important because gnawing wears down their teeth.

Beavers are 3 to 4 feet long and can weigh from 35 to 70 pounds.

Beavers have large, flat tails.

Some people think beavers use their tails to pack down mud or as a propeller in the water, but they don't.

They use their tails for balance.

When beavers gnaw on trees, they stand on their hind legs and press down with their tails.

This helps them get a bigger bite out of the tree and cut it down more quickly.

The quicker beavers cut down trees, the faster they can slip back into the water where it's harder for predators to get them.

Beavers also slap their tails against the water.

This may serve as a warning to other beavers.

Beaver lodges are built in streams, in lakes and marshes and are made of sticks packed with mud.

A lodge may have as many as three generations of a beaver family living in it.

Inside the lodge, just above the water, is a living chamber.

Beavers enter the lodge using underwater tunnels.

In winter, the mud covering the lodge freezes.

This makes it very difficult for predators to dig into the lodge.

A lodge may look quiet in the winter, but beavers are still active in the living chamber and under the ice.

They spend time grooming and feeding on the branches they've stored under the now frozen water.

Beavers change their environment to meet their needs.

They build dams out of branches and small rocks and mud to create ponds.

Ponds range in size from less than one acre to over 100 acres.

Beavers depend on their ponds for shelter, food, and protection.

They use and expand the pond until food supplies are gone.

After abandoning a pond site, beavers move to another area.

If they don't return, the old beaver pond turns into a meadow and eventually a forest.

Structural and behavioral adaptations are important to the survival of any animal.

But sometimes they can still have accidents.

Cody and Octave are going to visit Andy Stamper of the New England Aquarium.

He helps sea turtles that have stranded themselves during migration.

Music Hey, Cody and Octave, welcome to the New England Aquarium.

This is our critical care ward.

Right now, we're treating Kemp Ridley sea turtles which have washed ashore in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Music Do their adaptations adaptations, like, help them survive?

Adaptations?

His skin and shell protec him from the saltwater.

Saltwater is pretty harsh, and they can dehydrate in it.

They also have got a hard shell, which is known as a carapace.

And that is used also for just protecting them against attacks such as shark attacks and other turtles.

Music They don't get any water in their eyes, do they?

His eyes have a gland called the salt gland or lacrimal gland.

What that does is, when they do swallow water, they're able to excrete it out through their tears.

How about their beak?

Does it, like, help them, help them survive?

Well, their beak is very well adapted to fend off anything that's attacking them.

And also it's very well, well shaped and has a lot of jaw pressure to be able to grab and crack crabs and other crustaceans.

Is their bottom, like, underneat their stomach, is it, like, really hard?

Yeah.

Well, we need to look at that anyway, so we're going to tilt him up.

And again it's it's hard just like on top.

But this is another very fascinating adaption that they actually have a flexible, it moves, compared to like a tortoise, land tortoise, which doesn't move.

And that's because they dive very deeply.

And there's a lot of pressure when you go deep down, like if you've been diving in a pool, you know how your ears start to hurt?

That's pressure of the water.

And so they need to be able to deal with that.

And they've adapted to be able to move their plastron, which is the bottom, to be able to compensate for that.

These animals have survived millions and millions of years, and they're very, very well-adapted for the ocean.

The biggest problem right now is impacts of humans on them.

And so we need to give we need to give them a helping hand to be able to overcome that, because the adaptations can't evolve that quickly.

And were, they’re disappearing quicker than they can adapt to it.

Music What have we learned today?

Over time, all plants and animals develop adaptations that help them thrive and survive.

Some adaptations are structural.

They're changes in the organism's physical makeup.

Some adaptations are behavioral.

They are changes in the way an organism interacts with its environment.

Now you know how nature works!

Theme Music Major funding for Nature Works was provided by American Honda Foundation.

Additional funding was provided by Alice Freeman Muchnic, Alice J. Reen Charitable Trust, Cogswell Benevolent Trust, the Finisterre Fund, Greater Piscataqua Community Foundation, Morgridge Family Trust, the Natural Areas Wildlife Fund, Rawson L. Wood.