Question

Consider the following food chain: garden plants are eaten by snails, which are eaten by birds, which are eaten by the household cat. What happens to the other members of the food chain if the cat is removed?

Answer 1

If the cat does not eat the bird this means that the birds population will start increasing because the cat isn't killing them. The snail population will decrease due to the fact that there is an abundance of birds. The garden plants will also start to flourish because there are no snails eating them.

Answer 2

If the cat is removed the population of birds will escalate and exceed the population of the snails that sustain them.

The food chain is a depiction of the feeding relationship that exists in an ecosystem. An ecosystem is a self-supporting unit in which materials and energy are exchanged.

The food chain is as follows;

garden plants --> snails ---> birds --->household cat. We can see that removal of the cat means that the population of birds will escalate beyond the available population of snails. This will lead to competition for food among the birds within the ecosystem. The population of snails will suddenly decrease due to increase in the number of their predators. The number of garden plants will also increase due to the decrease in snail population.

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