Blood is created in bone marrow and is made up of cells suspended in liquid plasma. Red blood cells carry oxygen, white blood cells fight infection, and platelets are cell fragments that allow blood to clot.

Most animals consume other organisms to survive. Consumers (heterotrophs) are divided into three types, primary, secondary, and tertiary, based on their place in the food chain.

In the mesosphere, temperature again drops as altitude increases until the coldest point in the Earth's atmosphere, the mesopause, is reached where temperatures fall to −225 °F (−143 °C).

The crust and the rigid lithosphere (upper mantle) is made up of approximately thirty separate plates. These plates more very slowly on the slightly more liquid mantle (asthenosphere) beneath them. This movement has resulted in continental drift which is the gradual movement of land masses across Earth's surface. Continental drift is a very slow process, occurring over hundreds of millions of years.

Secondary consumers (carnivores) subsist mainly on primary consumers. Omnivores are secondary consumers that also eat producers. Examples are rats, fish, and chickens.