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

Decomposers (saprotrophs) are organisms such as bacteria and fungi that break down the organic matter in the dead bodies of plants and animals into simple nutrients.

Digestion begins in the mouth where the teeth and tongue break down food mechanically through chewing and saliva, via the enzyme salivary amylase, starts to break starches down chemically. From the mouth, food travels down the esophagus where contractions push the food into the stomach.

Work is performed on an object when an applied force causes displacement along the same vector. Measured in joules (J) or newton-meters (Nm), work is calculated by multiplying force times displacement:  \(W = \vec{F}\vec{d}\)

Tides are caused by the gravitational interaction of Earth and the Moon.