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GCSE biology - energy transfer

so I'm currently learning about feeding cycles and biomass but I'm starting to get really confused. One of the questions I was given to answer was 'Where do animals get their energy from?' but I'm not sure about my answer. I anybody can give me some pointers that would be sooo helpful :smile:

My answer:
- animals get their energy from eating other organisms. The producers are the source of energy in a food chain as they absorb light energy from the sunlight and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to produce glucose during photosynthesis. When the primary consumer eats the producer some of the energy is transferred to the organism but not all of it. The same thing happens when the secondary consumer eats the primary consumer, some of the energy that was transferred to the primary consumer from the producer is transferred from the primary consumer to the secondary consumer.

Reply 1

glowing_starfish

Nice answer

You could talk about the animal type e.g herbivores- carnivores n omnivores and the differences in where they get their energy

Reply 2

Bookworm_88

If you don’t mind me asking, how long is your gcse course and where are you roughly in it

Reply 3

devilsbreakfast

That answer sounds quite good, I’m assuming that this question was either a 4 or 6 mark question? A user above suggested talking abt herbivores etc but I don’t think this is necessarily needed. I’ve just (not) done my GCSEs and on my biology course (OCR Gateway) we didn’t need to know about that stuff, especially in relation to biomass, so I’m not sure wether this is something that would be expected of you from your particular exam board. If you really felt like you needed to add more you could say something a bit more about the loss of biomass by excretion, the fact that hair and bones aren’t eaten (maybe called egestion I can’t remember) but I really don’t think you need to. Good answer tho hope your work is ok in lockdown 👍