Life Without a Thumb!

In Science, we have just started our new unit on habitats and adaptations.  Earlier this week we learned that a habitat is the place where an organism (living thing) lives. A habitat needs to meet the basic needs of the plants and animals that live there.  

Plants need:

• sunlight
• water
• nutrients
• appropriate temperature range

Animals need:

• food
• water
• shelter
• appropriate temperature range

Today we learned that an adaptation is the way in which a plant or animal is suited to its habitat so it can survive there.  For example, one adaptation a giraffe has is its long neck.  This type of neck helps it reach the leaves on trees.  Another example of an adaptation is how a pond lily's big leaves help it gather sunlight.  The thing that most surprised us though was the fact that human beings have adaptations too!  One human adaptation is our opposable thumb.

An opposable thumb can be placed opposite the rest of the fingers on the hand.  It's what allows us to grasp objects.  To really appreciate this "handy" adaptation, we decided to see what life would be like without it!    

First each person taped down one thumb so it couldn't move.

Then we tried different tasks like writing . . .
 

Tying our shoelaces . . .

 Zipping our coats . . .

And even giving each other high fives (fours?).

What we realized is that our adaptation makes life a lot easier.  While we could still do some of these tasks, they took a lot longer and were a lot more difficult without our opposable thumb.  Thank goodness for adaptations!