A food web is a map of who eats whom in a natural community. It shows all the different feeding relationships connecting plants, animals, and other organisms in an ecosystem.

Think of it like a web of arrows where each arrow means “is eaten by.” Grass is eaten by grasshoppers and rabbits. Grasshoppers are eaten by birds and frogs. Rabbits are eaten by foxes and hawks. Birds are eaten by hawks too. The web shows how all these creatures depend on each other for food, creating a complex network of connections.

Scientists use food webs to understand how ecosystems work. If one species disappears, the web helps predict what might happen to others. When wolves were removed from Yellowstone National Park, deer populations exploded because nothing was hunting them. The deer ate so many young trees that river banks eroded. When wolves returned decades later, the entire ecosystem shifted back toward balance. The food web had been broken and then repaired.

A food web differs from a food chain, which shows just one simple path: grass to grasshopper to bird to hawk. Real ecosystems are messier and more interesting. Most animals eat multiple things and get eaten by multiple predators, creating that weblike pattern of connections that gives this concept its name.