Science Help!?

Question

Why is there so much less energy stored in tertiary consumers like snakes than in producers like grass? Where does the energy go?

Answer 1

There is less energy because there exist less tertiary consumers. There are trillions of blades of grass and only millions of snakes in the world, so even though snakes individually have more energy in them, overall, grass stores more energy because there is just so much.

Answer 2

There is much less energy stored in tertiary consumers because it takes so many secondary and primary consumers to maintain them, and then so many more producers to maintain all those animals. Plants (producers) capture the energy of the sun and make food via photosynthesis, but energy is lost in each step of the food chain.

Answer 3

to make it simple

grass get energy from the sun right? So they take it all in, let's say the sun has 100% energy
but grass has to lose a little since they also perform respiration, so the end result is 90%

well, then consumers
each level of consumer has to hunt and other metabolic activities
the higher up, the more work

so eventually that 90% goes down to like, 9%
the energy goes into the atmosphere as heat

Answer 4

Because there are losses to inefficiency at each trophic level.

Your body, for instance, has 25% energy efficiency. If you eat a banana 75% of the energy in the banana is lost to you (yes, biological systems SUCK for efficiency). On the other hand if you eat an animal that ate the banana, and the animal had the same energy efficiency as you, then you have to add the inefficiency factor of the animal's metabolism to the inefficiency factor of your own. Instead of 25% of the energy in the banana you're getting 6.25%.

Answer 5

as the energy travels up the food chain, some of it is lost in the form of heat. It's given off when the organism goes through its metabolic processes. The energy is released back in the the enviroment so less is consumed by the organisms higher up in the food chain.