Music This is how nature works!

Theme Music Music Nearly all the energy available for living things comes from the sun.

Plants are the only living things that take in the sun's energy directly.

Music So almost all living things get their energy from plants, either by eating them or by eating something that eats them.

That includes all animals.

Even you and me.

All the energy my body uses comes from the sun by way of plants.

Since shortly after the first living thing, organisms haven’t existed alone.

There are always other living things that are a part of their lives.

One may eat another, the way animals eat plants, or they may provide shelter for each other, or help each other reproduce.

These connections between organisms are called interrelationships.

Since plants make their own food using sunlight, air, soil, and water, most of them don't consume other living things.

Instead, plants produce the food for everything else.

So they're called producers.

Another word for plant is herb.

The Latin word for eater is vore, as in voracious.

Put them together and you get herbivore.

Herbivores are animals that only eat plants.

Some of them really are voracious - for herbs.

Music Plants make food by trapping sunlight with a colored chemical in their leaves called chlorophyl.

Chlorophyl uses solar energy to combine water and carbon dioxide from the air.

It produces sugars, food, chemicals packed with energy.

The plant uses some of the sugars and stores the rest as starch.

Those sugars and starches can be food for animals as well as plants.

Most herbivores only eat a part of a plant.

Deer browse for tender leaves and shoots.

Grasshoppers chew on leaves.

Horses eat the tops of grass plants.

Some birds, like goldfinches, are seed eaters.

Seeds are a part of the plant that are high in fats and oils, which are a good source of energy.

Other animals eat plant parts that are less rich in nutrients, such as grass.

Bison spend most of their time grazing and digesting their food.

Getting the most out of plants that have so little nutrition requires a special digestive system.

The energy is blocked in tough fibers, so animals like bison, sheep, deer, goats, and cattle have to swallow their food, then bring it up and chew it again.

They also have a special stomach containing microorganisms that break down the fibers.

The part of the stomach with the microorganisms is called the rumen.

So these herbivores are called ruminants.

Living things have lots of interrelationships.

One of the most important is between plants and animals, where plants produce energy and animals, called herbivores, consume it.

We have a really large herbivore that lives here, right in this area.

It's the moose.

Dave knows of a beaver pond near the Nature Center, where they go to feed.

Music Through here.

Go over here.

Dave, this looks like a good place to find moose.

This is a great place to find moose.

If you look out here, not only is there water for the moose to drink, and even come in here to get cooled off on a hot day or get away from the bugs, but there's so many plants.

Not just the plants here in the water, but up on the shoreline.

You can see the sunlight?

When it hits the plants, because all the sunlight’s here, these plants grow up within easy reach of the moose to browse on those.

And then the plants in the water too, of course, are very nutritious.

What kind of plants are these?

Well, we've got a variety of plants here.

We've got some submerged plants like these plants that are going under the water here.

Some coon tails and some other vegetation.

Bladderwort.. We also have some floating plants, the things that look like pond weeds or little pond leaves here are actually kind of pond reed, that's their name, and or even pond shield over here it looks like a little shield.

And then we've got these ones that look like grass.

Only that’s not grass, those are called bur-reeds.

But all of these plants are great for moose because not only they provide general nutrition for them, but the bull moose particular come here.

And some people think the nutrients in these aquatic plants help them to grow that great big rack of antlers that they have to grow every year.

So they’re really high in mineralas.

So moose and other animals get their energy from these plants, right?

That's right.

In fact, every plant on the planet gets its energy from the sun, and every animal on the planet really gets energy from the sun, since ultimately, if you don't eat plants, you're going to have to eat something that does eat plants.

Moose are such large animals and they eat a lot.

Does this damage their habitat?

You're right, they are large animals and they do eat a lot.

30 to 50 pounds of greens every single day.

But they're browsers, so that means they're just taking the tips of the leaves and the twigs and things.

And when, even when they come into the water here, they're eating this aquatic vegetation and they may spend a lot of time uprooting at one spot, but then they don't necessarily come back to that area again.

We've learned a little bit about moose habitat here today, but let's learn more about this large ruminant that lives here in the wild.

Music Moose are the largest of the deer family.

They can be as tall as 7.5 feet and weigh over 1,700 pounds.

They live in most of Canada, parts of the United States, including Alaska, the Rocky Mountains, south into Colorado, and in the eastern states bordering Canada.

They also live in Northern Asia and Europe, where they're called elk.

In warm months, moose often feed on water lilies and other aquatic plants.

They also use ponds to cool off and escape biting insects.

In the winter, they browse on woody plants like the twigs and buds and bark of willow, birch, aspen, and fir.

The male or bull moose have large antlers that start to grow in the spring.

When antlers first start to grow, they're covered with soft, fuzzy skin called velvet.

The velvet has blood vessels in it that provide nutrients to help the antlers grow.

By late summer, the antlers reach full size, stretching across 4 to 5 feet.

When the blood supply dries up, moose rub their antlers against trees and shrubs to scrape off the velvet.

During the mating season in the fall, females attract males with their deep calls and strong scent.

Bull moose use their antlers in threat displays when they're fighting over females.

Sometimes they'll get into a pushing fight with their antlers.

These fights usually don't get too serious, but if they do, antlers could lock together and both moose could die.

When the mating season is over, the antlers fall off.

Mice and other rodents eat them because they're a good source of calcium.

Females give birth to 1 or 2 calves during the spring.

Calves stay with their mother for about a year.

And mothers are very protective of their young and will charge people if they get too close.

Bull moose may also charge people and even cars during the mating season.

Moose can run as fast as 35 miles an hour, so it's a good idea to stay out of their way.

Moose eat about 50 pounds of plants every day.

That's a lot of buds, twigs and leaves.

Beaver ponds and areas affected by forest fires or clearcutting are good browsing areas for moose because they receive lots of sunlight and young plants grow quickly.

Moose consume tremendous amounts of new plant growth and thrive in places like clear cuts and cuts like these here, where the plants grow faster.

Faster growing plants are also of interest to people as well.

Professor Brent Loy is producing melons that grow quicker, bigger, and sweeter, and he's going to show Olivia and Michael just how he's doing it.

Music Well, we're walking into a melon breeding plot here, and it's part of agriculture research that's going on at the University of New Hampshire to make better plants.

What is a melon breeding plot?

Well, a melon breeding plot is where we study the genetics and heredity, how traits are passed on from one generation to the next, and how we can use these different traits and different types of melons to make better melons.

And so not only do we devise these cultural systems to help the melons grow better, but we also are trying to develop melons which take a much shorter season to develop.

And we do that by changing the flowering pattern, so that the melons flower early, and we also develop melons that ripen much faster.

Instead of ripening in 50 days we have melons that ripen 35 days.

So what are all the different colored flags for?

Well, that's a good question.

These flags are actually part of the breeding process because these melon plants are normally pollinated or crossed by bees.

Okay?

And for breeding purposes, we have to do our own crosses by hand in order to get the right traits being transferred from one generation to the next generation.

Would one of you like to do a pollination?

Sure!

Okay, let me look around here.

See if you can find the flowers for pollinate with.

We want to find a male flower and a female flower that's been tied off.

That's a good job.

You have to be real gentle with these flowers.

Real small, aren't they?

If you want, I’ll hold that for you while you take the clip off the female flower.

And then just dab a little pollen right on the center of the flower there.

Good job.

And then to keep the bees from coming back in, we have to put this clip back on those petals.

Good job.

You pollinated your first flower.

So is that how you get the plants to grow bigger, faster?

Well, that's part of the process.

Okay?

But if we want to get different types of plants and different fruit types, then we have to cross different types of plants and if we go look at a ripe fruit, I can show you some of the things we look at, some of the fun things, the eating quality.

Now this is a special-type melon we're going to cut open.

It's not an orange flesh cantaloupe.

This melon will have green flesh.

Notice that this flesh isn’t, isn’t mushy because even though these melons will be grown locally, we want, the farmer has to put them out at his market.

And they have to keep for a day or two.

You might as well enjoy this while you can.

These are nice and sweet.

Really good.

Great.

That's a tough job for me.

I have to sample these all day long.

Bout now, that's a pretty tough job, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

It's the part of the breeding job that, that is really delightful.

Okay.

Just sampling melons all day.

Music What have we learned today?

In the natural world, some living things are producers and some are consumers.

Plants are producers.

They make their own food using sunlight.

Animals are consumers.

They don't make their own food.

Animals that eat only plants are herbivores.

Now you know how nature works!

Theme Music Major funding for Nature Works was provided by American Honda Foundation.

Additional funding was provided by Alice Freeman Muthnic, Alice J. Reen Charitable Trust, Cogswell Benevolent Trust, the Finisterre Fund, Greater Piscataqua Community Foundation, Morgridge Family Trust, the Natural Areas Wildlife Fund, Rawsen L. Wood.

(animal sounds)