Food chains
Who eats whom? Plants make food, animals eat plants or other animals, and decomposers break everything down again. Together they form a food web in which energy is passed along.
Why
Why are there thousands of mice in an Ardennes forest, but only a few foxes?
A fox eats mice, rabbits, beetles and berries. Feeding one fox for a whole year takes a great many mice. And each mouse in turn eats countless seeds and leaves. The higher you go in the line of who eats whom, the fewer animals can live there.
That's because at every step most of the energy is lost: on moving, keeping warm and breathing. Only a small part is left for whoever eats next. That's why a forest can support lots of plants, fewer herbivores and only a handful of predators.
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