What Is an Adaptation?
Science · Life Science and Biology · Grades 2–6
Meaning at a glance
An adaptation is a feature or behaviour that helps a living thing survive in its habitat.
Also searched as: adaptations, adapted, adapt.
Understand it simply
Living things are suited to the places they live. The things that help them are called adaptations. There are two kinds:
- Body features (structural adaptations), such as a camel’s fat-storing hump, a bird’s wings, or a cactus’s thick stem that stores water.
- Behaviours, such as birds flying to warmer places for the winter, or animals sleeping through the hottest part of the day.
See it work
Mangrove trees grow in muddy, salty water along the coast of Sierra Leone. Mud has very little air, so many mangroves grow roots that stick up above the mud to take in air. Those roots are an adaptation that lets the tree live where most trees could not.
Avoid this confusion
An adaptation is not something one animal chooses to do in a day. A person putting on a coat is not an adaptation. Adaptations are features that have been passed down over many generations in a kind of living thing, because they helped it survive.
Try it yourself
Work these out first, then check your answers below.
Name one adaptation that helps a camel live in a hot desert.
Birds flying to warmer places for the winter: is this a body feature or a behaviour?
Why do polar bears have thick fur and a layer of fat under the skin?
Check your understanding
Show the answer to question 1
Answer: For example: fat stored in its hump, long eyelashes that keep out sand, or wide feet that do not sink.
Each of these body features helps the camel survive where food, water and shade are scarce.
Show the answer to question 2
Answer: A behaviour.
It is something the birds do, not a body part.
Show the answer to question 3
Answer: To keep warm in the freezing Arctic.
Thick fur and fat reduce heat loss, which helps the bear survive in very cold places.
Understand more with Courseversity
You now know what adaptation means. Keep going with a full lesson, then explore the ideas that connect to it.
Learn
Learn this in a full lesson.
- Plants in habitats (Grade 2)
- Animal adaptations (Grade 3)
- Plant adaptations (Grade 3)
- Adaptations (Grade 6)
Practise
Practise with Learning Lab questions for the lesson Plants in habitats (Grade 2), with an explanation after each answer.
Explore
Ideas that connect to this word.
- Habitat: adaptations suit a living thing to its habitat.
- Food chain: many adaptations help animals find or avoid being food.
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Sources and review
- National Geographic Education: Adaptation and Survival – Encyclopedic entry on structural and behavioural adaptations.
Written by: Courseversity editorial team (AI-assisted draft).
Review status: checked against the sources above. Educator review is pending, so please tell us if anything looks wrong.
Last updated: 27 October 2026.