Student Worksheet

How Animals Respond To Bushfires - Activity Instructions

Students will...

You will recognise a range of ways Australian animals respond to bushfires
You will understand the value of asking questions, particularly in science
You will recognise a range of different types of questions
You will understand how to develop questions.

Students can...

You can analyse a range of texts
You can develop questions appropriate to scientific inquiry
You can conduct research independently
You can write a letter explaining the findings of your research.

READ THE CONVERSATION ARTICLE BELOW

Animal response to a bushfire is astounding. These are the tricks they use to survive

Sensing fire

In 2018, a staff member at Audubon Zoo in the United States accidentally burned pastry, and noticed something peculiar. In nearby enclosures ten sleepy lizards, or Tiliqua rugosa, began pacing and rapidly flicking their tongues. But sleepy lizards in rooms unaffected by smoke remained burrowed and calm.

It was obvious the lizards sensed the smoke from the burnt pastry, probably through olfaction, or sense of smell (which is enhanced by tongue flicking). So the lizards were responding as they would to a bushfire.

In Australia, experiments have shown smoke also awakens Gould’s long-eared bats and fat-tailed dunnarts, enabling their escape from fire.

Read more: Bushfires have reshaped life on Earth before. They could do it again

Animals also recognise the distinct sounds of fire. Reed frogs flee towards cover and eastern-red bats wake from torpor when played the crackling sounds of fire.

Other species detect fire for different reasons. Fire beetles from the genus Melanophila depend on fire for reproduction, as their larvae develop in the wood of burned trees. They can detect fire chemicals at very low concentrations, as well as infrared radiation from fires.

The beetles can detect very distant fires; one study suggests individuals of some species identify a fire from 130km away.

Stay or go?

Once an animal becomes aware of an approaching fire, it’s decision time: stay or go?

It’s common to see large animals fleeing a fire, such as the kangaroos filmed hopping from a fire front in Monaro in New South Wales a few days ago. Kangaroos and wallabies make haste to dams and creek lines, sometimes even doubling back through a fire front to find safety in areas already burned.

Kangaroos fleeing bushfire in Monaro, NSW (https://youtu.be/TRm14TfPL6g)

Other animals prefer to stay put, seeking refuge in burrows or under rocks. Smaller animals will happily crash a wombat burrow if it means surviving a fire. Burrows buffer animals from the heat of fires, depending on their depth and nearby fuel loads.

From here, animals can repopulate the charred landscape as it recovers. For example, evidence suggests populations of the agile antechinus (a small carnivorous marsupial) and the bush rat recovered primarily from within the footprint of Victoria’s Black Saturday fires.

Avoiding fire is only half the battle

The hours, days, and weeks after fire bring a new set of challenges. Food resources will often be scarce, and in the barren landscape some animals, such as lizards and smaller mammals, are more visible to hungry predators.

Birds of prey arrive quickly at fires. Several species in northern Australia have been observed intentionally spreading fires by transporting burning sticks in their talons or beaks.

Read more: Making sense of Australia's bushfire crisis means asking hard questions – and listening to the answers

One US study published in 2017 recorded a seven-fold increase in raptor activity during fire. They begin hunting as the fires burn, and hang around for weeks or months to capitalise on vulnerable prey.

Feral cats can travel kilometres in search of vulnerable prey in a burnt-out landscape. HUGH MCGREGOR

In Australia, introduced predators can also be drawn to fires. Feral cats have been observed travelling up to 12.5km from their home ranges towards recently burned savanna ecosystems, potentially drawn by distant smoke plumes promising new prey.

A 2016 study found a native rodent was 21 times more likely to die in areas exposed to intense fire compared to unburned areas, mostly due to predation by feral cats. Red foxes have an affinity for burned areas too.

So should a little critter hunker down, or begin the hazardous search for a new home?

Staying put

Perhaps because of the risks of moving through an exposed landscape, several Australian mammals have learnt to minimise movement following fire. This might allow some mammal populations to recover from within a fire footprint.

Native mammals have been found hiding in beds of ash after fires.

Read more: Koalas are the face of Australian tourism. What now after the fires?

Short-beaked echidnas seek refuge and, when finding it, lower their body temperature and limit activity, so reducing the amount of food they need for energy. Despite their spiny defences, echidnas have been found more often in the stomachs of foxes following fire, so staying put in a little refuge is a good move.

Small marsupials such as brown and yellow-footed antechinus also use torpor to suppress their energy use and therefore the need to seek food.

Some animals can flee a fireground, while others use bush-smarts to stay put. Jeremy Piper/AAP

Running the gauntlet

Not all wildlife have adapted to stay put after a fire, and moving in search of a safe haven might be the best option.

Animals might take short, information-gathering missions from their refuges into the fireground before embarking on a risky trek. They may, for example, spot a large, unburned tree that would make good habitat, and so move towards it. Without such cues to orient their movement, animals spend more time travelling, wasting precious energy reserves and increasing the risk of becoming predator food.

A dead bird at a Victorian property on January 4, 2019. The ecological toll of the bushfires is immense. James Ross/AAP

Survival is not assured

Australia’s animals have a long, impressive history of co-existing with fire. However, a recent study I led with 27 colleagues considered how relatively recent threats make things much harder for animals in fire-prone landscapes.

Some native species are not accustomed to dealing with red foxes and feral cats, and so might overlook cues that indicate their presence, and make the bad decision to move through a burned landscape when they should stay put.

Read more: Listen to your people Scott Morrison: the bushfires demand a climate policy reboot

When fires burn habitat in agricultural or urban landscapes, animals might encounter not just predators but vehicles, livestock and harmful chemicals.

And as this bushfire season has made brutally clear, climate change is increasing the scale and intensity of bushfires. This reduces the number of small refuges such as fallen logs, increases the distance animals must cover to find new habitat and leaves fewer cues to direct them to safer places.

We still have a lot to learn about how Australia’s wildlife detect and respond to fire. Filling in the knowledge gaps might lead to new ways of helping wildlife adapt to our rapidly changing world.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Part A: Find The Answers

Step 1.

Start with some reflective writing.

Read the two quotes below and think about the following:

What do you think this quote might mean?
What does this quote make you think about?
Do you agree with this quote? Why or why not?

“A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.” - Bruce Lee

“We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.” - Lloyd Alexander

Write your thoughts in the space provided below:

Step 2.

Use a dictionary or an online dictionary such as: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/ to find the definitions of the following words. Record your answers in the table below.

Step 3.

Read the article and answer the following questions.

1. What is this article about? What is happening in this article?

2. What is the key message of this article?

3. How is this article connected to what you already know?

4. What aspects of this article are new to you?

5. What does this article make you think about?

6. How does this article make you feel?

Step 4.

Read through the article again and come up with three to five questions about the article. Add these to the table below in the middle column.

To complete the last two columns of the table you need to read the information in the box below to determine what type of question you have come up with.

Step 5.

Re-writing your questions.

Any questions that you identified as being closed need to be re-written as open-ended questions.

For example, if your question is ‘Do animals in the desert sleep during the day to keep out of the heat?’ (closed) you could rewrite it as ‘How do animals in the desert avoid the heat of the day?’ (open-ended)

Part B: Putting It All Together

Step 1.

Choose one of your new open-ended questions from above and research to find out the answers.

You can record your research in a separate document on your computer but remember to save your work!

Step 2.

Now that you have completed your research about your chosen question, write a letter to a friend, family member or teacher explaining what your question was and what you discovered.

You can use a letter template that you find online or you could use those found in a program such as Microsoft Word.

Start A Conversation

Connect with the writer of the article from The Conversation by emailing/writing or connecting on social media and explaining to them what you learned from their article and what research of your own you conducted.

Taking It Further

Take some time to write a journal/diary entry to yourself reflecting on what the article made you think about, how it made you feel and any questions you might still have.

How Animals Respond To Bushfires - Science - English Years 7 to 10

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