What's on the Menu?

Meat, plants, or both? Every animal has a diet that keeps it healthy. Let's sort them out.

🎯 Learning goal: group animals as carnivores, herbivores or omnivores, link their teeth to their diet, and see why the right food matters.

🥩 Carnivoreeats mostly meat

🥬 Herbivoreeats mostly plants

🍽️ Omnivoreeats plants AND meat

1 · Sort the animals

2 · Teeth tell a story

The shape of an animal's teeth is a clue to what it eats.

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Sharp, pointed teeth

Carnivores use sharp canines to grip and tear meat.

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Flat, wide teeth

Herbivores use flat molars to grind tough plants and grass.

🧑

A mix of both

Omnivores (like us!) have sharp AND flat teeth for a varied diet.

🐾 Why it matters: feeding an animal the wrong food makes it poorly. A rabbit needs hay and greens, not meat; a cat is a true carnivore and needs meat. Giving the right diet is one of the five welfare needs — never a guess.

💡 For grown-ups: covers KS2 science 'animals including humans' — food types and the function of teeth. Extend by looking at real skulls/pictures, or sorting the class's own pets. Links directly to welfare (correct diet).

Herbivore, carnivore, omnivore

Sorting cards: herbivores, carnivores and omnivores

Herbivore eats plants. Carnivore eats animals. Omnivore eats both — and that includes you.

Look at the teeth and you can tell. A herbivore has flat, grinding teeth for mashing plants. A carnivore has long pointed teeth for gripping and tearing. An omnivore has both kinds in the same mouth — run your tongue along your own teeth and you will find them: sharp at the front, flat at the back. That is the evidence, in your own head.

Match the animal to its food

Matching cards: which animal eats which food

A welfare warning, and this one matters. Getting an animal's food wrong is not a small mistake — it makes them seriously ill.

· A rabbit needs mostly hay, not a bowl of carrots. Carrots are sugary — a treat, not a meal.
· Gary the hedgehog eats insects. Bread and milk — the classic thing people leave out for hedgehogs — will make one very ill. Hedgehogs cannot digest milk at all.
· A koala eats eucalyptus and almost nothing else, which is exactly why it is in such trouble when the trees go.

Knowing what an animal eats is not a quiz question. It is the difference between keeping it alive and not.