If you visit any rivers or streams in Missouri, you may run across the energetic and playful North American river otter. Otters live in riparian zones. These are areas where water, like lakes and rivers, meet up with land. Otters are picky about the environment in which they live. They like unpolluted streams and waters that haven’t been changed my humans. Scientists describe otters are keystone or indicator species – meaning if an otter is in an ecosystem, that ecosystem is most likely healthy. In this hour of code activity, students will use Scratch to program a model to show the interaction between the river otter and its ecosystem.
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