Churchill Science

After the Australians took all the cats away, the rabbits were still there. You always have to have a top predator to make the other animals survive, because the rabbit population grew 100% and that is too much. They don’t have any more predators. The rabbits ate too much of the beautiful grass, so there was no grass to hold the soil in place. The water broke down the soil and it’s getting very muddy.

The people took the cats away because they were eating all the birds and the plants, but the birds are in danger still because of the erosion. Before they took the cats away, it looked like a quite beautiful rainforest, but since they took the cats away, now it just looks like people ruined the environment.

by Room 222

This is Macquarie Island. It’s part of the country of Australia. This penguin colony lives there. There are also other kinds of seabirds, cats, and rabbits on the island. About 9 years ago, Australia decided to get rid of all the cats so that they wouldn’t hunt the seabirds.

If you’ve ever played that Rabbits-Foxes-Grass game, you might be able to predict what happened next. What happened in our game when we didn’t have many foxes?

Ever since we played this game in class, kids have been trying to beat the highest score. Some of you have posted saying you got “99999999999999999999999999999″… OK, well, this is Lisa’s top score. 98 points! If you were able to beat it (for real) post here and tell us how!

To answer Owen’s comment: I know of one other game a little bit like this one. But it’s not about ecosystems. It’s about planets! We’ll play it when we study about space.

Here’s a question for you all: One of these living things does not need the other two to survive. Which one is it?