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.

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.

The rows of the Periodic Table are called periods and contain elements that have the same number of electron shells ordered from lower to higher atomic number.

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

A vibrating object produces a sound wave that travels outwardly from the object through a medium (any liquid or solid matter). The vibration disturbs the particles in the surrounding medium, those particles disturb the particules next to them, and so on, as the sound propagates away from the vibration.