NCERT Solutions for Class 8th Science Chapter 12 .5 Who Eats Whom? — Activity 12.8: Let us trace and link
Book page 20012 Updated on2026-09-08
Q1.
Look at Fig. 12.11. Put more arrows for the missing relationship of ‘who eats whom’.
Answer
Fig. 12.11 already prints these arrows: Grasses → Hare, Grasses → Mouse, Hare → Hawk, Mouse → Fox, Grasshopper → Frog, Grasshopper → Bird, Frog → Owl, Bird → Snake and Snake → Hawk.
The links still missing, which you should add, are:
Arrow to add
Why
Grasses → Grasshopper
The grasshopper is a herbivore; the grass is its producer.
Hare → Fox
The fox hunts hares as well as mice.
Mouse → Owl
The owl hunts small rodents at night.
Mouse → Hawk
The hawk also takes mice from open ground.
Frog → Snake
Snakes prey on frogs, not only on birds.
Bird → Hawk
The hawk hunts small birds.
Snake → Owl
Owls take small snakes too.
Fig. 12.11 completed. A few further links (for example hawk → nothing, since it is a top predator) are left out to keep the picture readable.
Q2.
How many other organisms might be connected to one organism through a feeding relationship in an ecosystem?
Answer
Many more than two. Take the mouse in Fig. 12.11: it eats grasses, and it is itself eaten by the fox, the owl and the hawk — four direct links from one animal. And that is only the part drawn; a real mouse also eats grains and insects, and is taken by snakes and cats as well.
One organism → several kinds of food below it One organism → several kinds of predator above it So one organism is usually tied to four, five or more others directly, and to the whole ecosystem indirectly
Why it happens: no animal eats only one thing, and no animal is eaten by only one thing. Being tied to several food sources is what lets an animal survive a bad season for any one of them. This is exactly why food chains do not stay separate — they cross and interlink to form a food web.
Q3.
Are these food chains interlinked?
Answer
Yes. In Fig. 12.11 you can trace at least four chains, and they share organisms at every level:
The grasses appear in all four; the hawk appears in two. Because each of the organisms may be eaten by two or more types of organisms, the chains join up into a network — a food web.
Why it happens: a web is far more stable than a single chain. If the grasshoppers fail one year, the frog can still be fed from another route, and the owl still has mice. But the same connections also carry damage: harm one organism and the effect can travel along several chains at once, which is the theme of the next section.