A Food Web
Free printable food web diagram — a woodland food web showing how plants and animals are connected, with arrows showing how energy flows. Download a high-resolution PDF or PNG for Letter paper.
How a food web is built
A food web shows how the living things in a habitat are connected by what they eat. Energy passes from one organism to the next, following the arrows. Here is what happens at each labeled part of the diagram:
| Role | What it does | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Producers | Plants like grass and bushes that make their own food from sunlight. They are the base of the web. | If producers disappeared, every other living thing in the web would eventually starve — there would be no new energy entering the system at all. They do something no animal can: they manufacture food out of thin air and sunlight. |
| Primary consumers | Plant-eaters (herbivores) such as the grasshopper, rabbit and mouse. | Without herbivores, plants would go uneaten and the energy locked inside them could never move up the web to feed larger animals. They are the critical bridge that transfers plant energy into animal bodies. |
| Secondary consumers | Animals that eat the plant-eaters, such as the fox, snake and hawk. | Predators like foxes and hawks keep herbivore populations from exploding — without them, plant-eaters would multiply unchecked and strip a habitat bare. Remove a secondary consumer and the whole web can collapse in a chain reaction ecologists call a trophic cascade. |
| The arrows | Each arrow points from the food to the animal that eats it, showing the direction energy flows through the web. | Reversing even one arrow in your head reveals something important: energy only flows one way, and it gets weaker at every step, which is why there are always far more rabbits than hawks. The arrows make that one-way energy journey visible at a glance. |
Companion worksheet
A free fill-in worksheet with an answer key, built from the labels above — students match each role to its description, then answer a couple of short questions. Great for a quick check after using the diagram.
How to print
Choose Download PDF for a ready-to-print file that fits US Letter paper (8.5 × 11") in landscape, or Download PNG for the high-resolution image.
Frequently asked questions
What is a food web?
A food web is a diagram that shows how the food chains in a habitat connect. It shows what eats what, with arrows pointing from each food source to the animal that eats it.
What is the difference between a food chain and a food web?
A food chain shows a single line of who-eats-whom, while a food web connects many food chains to show all the feeding relationships in a habitat.
What paper size should I print this on?
The diagram is sized for standard US Letter paper (8.5 × 11") in landscape orientation. Use "Download PDF" for a print-ready file that fits the page automatically.