Haematophagy

 Haematophagy


From Wikipedia


Classification

By mode of ingestion

There are many modes of feeding that animals exhibit, including:

• Filter feeding: obtaining nutrients from particles suspended in water
• Deposit feeding: obtaining nutrients from particles suspended in soil
• Fluid feeding: obtaining nutrients by consuming other organisms' fluids
• Bulk feeding: obtaining nutrients by eating all of an organism
• Ram feeding and suction feeding: ingesting prey via the fluids around it.

By mode of digestion

• Extra-cellular digestion: excreting digesting enzymes and then reabsorbing the products
• Myzocytosis: one cell pierces another using a feeding tube, and sucks out cytoplasm
• Phagocytosis: engulfing food matter into living cells, where it is digested

By food type

"Polyphagy" redirects here. For increased appetite as a medical symptom, see polyphagia.

Polyphagy is the ability of an animal to eat a variety of food, whereas monophagy is the intolerance of every food except of one specific type (see generalist and specialist species).

Another classification refers to the specific food animals specialize in eating, such as:

• Carnivore: the eating of animals
  
  • Araneophagy: eating spiders
  • Avivore: eating birds
  • Durophagy: eating hard-shelled or exoskeleton bearing organisms
  • Haematophagy: eating blood
  • Insectivore: eating insects
    
    • Myrmecophagy: eating ants and/or termites
  • Invertivore: eating invertebrates
  • Keratophagy or Ceratophagy: eating horny material, such as wool by cloths moths, or snakes eating their own skin afterecdysis.
  • Lepidophagy: eating fish scales
  • Molluscivore: eating molluscs
  • Mucophagy: eating mucus
  • Ophiophagy: eating snakes
  • Oophagy: eating eggs (but also see "Intrauterine cannibalism" below)
  • Piscivore: eating fish
  • Spongivore: eating sponges
  • Teuthophagore: eating mainly squid and other cephalopods
  • Vermivore: eating worms
• Herbivore: the eating of plants
  
  • Exudativore: eating plant and/or insect exudates (gum, sap, lerp, etc.)
    
    • Gumivore: eating tree gum
  • Folivore: eating leaves
  • Florivore: eating flower tissue prior to seed coat formation
  • Frugivore: eating fruits
  • Graminivore: eating grasses
  • Granivore: eating seeds
  • Nectarivore: eating nectar
  • Palynivore: eating pollen
  • Xylophagy: eating wood
• Omnivore: the eating of both plants, animals, fungi, bacteria etc. The term means "all-eater".
• Fungivore: the eating of fungus
• Bacterivore: the eating of bacteria
• Planktivore: the eating of plankton

The eating of non-living or decaying matter:

• Coprophagy: eating feces
• Detritivore: eating decomposing material
• Geophagy: eating inorganic earth
• Osteophagy: eating bones
• Scavenger: eating carrion

There are also several unusual feeding behaviours, either normal,opportunistic, or pathological, such as:

• Cannibalism: feeding on members of the same species
  
  • Intrauterine cannibalism
    
    • Oophagy or Ovophagy: the embryo/foetus eats sibling eggs
    • Embryophagy: the foetus eats sibling embryos
  • Filial cannibalism
  • Self-cannibalism: feeding on parts of one's own body (see alsoautophagy
  • Sexual cannibalism: cannibalism after mating
• Kleptoparasitism: stealing food from another animal
• Lignophagia: eating wood, typically a pathological condition in some domestic animals
• Paedophagy: eating young animals
• Pica: appetite for largely non-nutritive substances, e.g. clay or hair, sometimes in pregnancy or in pathological states, typically a medical or veterinary concern.
• Placentophagy: eating placenta
• Trophallaxis: eating food regurgitated by another animal
• Zoopharmacognosy: self-medication by eating plants, soils, andinsects to treat and prevent disease.

An opportunistic feeder sustains itself from a number of different food sources, because the species is behaviourally sufficiently flexible.

Storage behaviours

Some animals exhibit hoarding and caching behaviours in which they store or hide food for later use.

Others

Alcohol—it is widely believed that some animals eat rotting fruit for this to ferment and make them drunk, however, this has been refuted in the case of at least elephants.^[2]

See also

• Consumer-resource systems
• Dinosaur diet and feeding
• List of abnormal behaviours in animals

References

1. Jump up^ Sahney, S., Benton, M.J. & Falcon-Lang, H.J. (2010). "Rainforest collapse triggered Pennsylvanian tetrapod diversification in Euramerica" (PDF). Geology 38 (12): 1079–1082.doi:10.1130/G31182.1.
2. Jump up^ Bakalar, N. (2005). "Elephants drunk in the wild? Scientists put the myth to rest". Retrieved May 24, 2013.

Mesocarnivore

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A red fox (Vulpes vulpes) eating a rodent - an example of a mesocarnivore.

A mesocarnivore is an animal whose diet consists of 50–70% meat with the balance consisting of non-vertebrate foods which may include fungi, fruits, and other plant material.^[1] Mesocarnivores are seen today among the Canidae(coyotes, many foxes), Viverridae(civets), Mustelidae (martens,tayra), Procyonidae (ring-tailed cat), Mephitidae (skunks), andHerpestidae (some mongooses).

Mesocarnivores represent the earliest Miacoidea family of Miacidae. They are best represented by Prohesperocyon, species P. wilsoni, with 3 incisors, 1 canine tooth, 4 premolars above. The jaw has 3 molars below, and 2 molars above on each side.^[2]

Dentition[edit]

Mesocarnivore cheek teeth are heterodont and their different shapes reflect distinct functions. Incisors and canines are used to apprehend food and kill prey, pointed premolars pierce and hold prey, and molars are involved in both slicing and crushing functions. The slicing function of the molars is produced by occlusion between the carnassials, the lower first molar, and the upper fourth premolar.

See also[edit]

Trophic level

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

First trophic level. The plants in this image, and the algae andphytoplankton in the lake, areprimary producers. They take nutrients from the soil or the water, and manufacture their own food byphotosynthesis, using energy from the sun.

The trophic level of an organismis the position it occupies in a food chain. The word trophic derives from the Greek τροφή (trophē) referring to food or feeding. A food chain represents a succession of organisms that eat another organism and are, in turn, eaten themselves. The number of steps an organism is from the start of the chain is a measure of its trophic level. Food chains start at trophic level 1 with primary producers such as plants, move to herbivores at level 2, predators at level 3 and typically finish with carnivores or apex predators at level 4 or 5. The path along the chain can form either a one-way flow or a food "web". Ecological communities with higher biodiversity form more complex trophic paths.

Hyper Carnavoir

Hypercarnivore

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lions are an example of a hypercarnivore

A hypercarnivore is an animalwhich has a diet that is more than 70% meat, with the balance consisting of non-animal foods such as fungi, fruits or other plant material.^[1][2] Some examples include felids, dolphins, eagles,snakes, marlin, and most sharks. Every species in the Felidaefamily, including the domesticatedcat, is a hypercarnivore in its natural state. Some well-known hypercarnivorous invertebrates are octopodes and starfish.^{[citation needed]} Additionally, this term is also used in paleobiology to describe taxa of animals which have an increased slicing component of their dentitionrelative to the grinding component.^[2] Hypercarnivores need not be apex predators. For example, salmon are exclusively carnivorous, yet they are prey at all stages of life for a variety of organisms.

Many prehistoric mammals of the clade Carnivoramorpha (Carnivora and Miacoidea without Creodonta), along with the early order Creodonta, and some mammals of the even earlier order Cimolesta, were hypercarnivores. The earliest carnivorous mammal is considered to be Cimolestes, which existed during the Late Cretaceous and earlyPaleogene periods in North America about 66 million years ago.Theropod dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus rex that existed during the late Cretaceous, although not mammals, were obligate carnivores.

Large hypercarnivores evolved frequently in the fossil record, often in response to an ecological opportunity afforded by the decline or extinction of previously dominant hypercarnivorous taxa. While the evolution of large size and carnivory may be favored at the individual level, it can lead to a macroevolutionary decline, wherein such extreme dietary specialization results in reduced population densities and a greater vulnerability for extinction.^[3] As a result of these opposing forces, the fossil record of carnivores is dominated by successive clades of hypercarnivores that diversify and decline, only to be replaced by new hypercarnivorous clades.

As an example of related species with differing diets, even though they diverged only 150,000 years ago,^[4] the polar bear is the most highly carnivorous bear (more than 90% of its diet is meat) while the grizzly bear is one of the least carnivorous in many locales, with less than 10% of its diet being meat.^[5][6][7]

See also[edit]

• Hypocarnivore
• List of feeding behaviours
• Mesocarnivore

References[edit]

Look uphypercarnivorein Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

1. Jump up^ Van Valkenburgh, B. (1988). "Trophic diversity in past and present guilds of large predatory mammals". Paleobiology14: 155–73.
2. ^ Jump up to:^a b Holliday, J.A; Steppan, S.J. (2004). "Evolution of hypercarnivory: the effect of specialization on morphological and taxonomic diversity".Paleobiology 30 (1): 108–128. doi:10.1666/0094-8373(2004)030<0108:EOHTEO>2.0.CO;2. ISSN 0094-8373.
3. Jump up^ Van Valkenburgh, B.; Wang, X; Damuth, J (2004). "Cope's Rule, Hypercarnivory, and Extinction in North American Canids". Science 306(5693): 101–4. Bibcode:2004Sci...306..101V.doi:10.1126/science.1102417. PMID 15459388.
4. Jump up^ Lindqvist, Charlotte; Schuster, Stephan C.; Sun, Yazhou; Talbot, Sandra L.; Qi, Ji; Ratan, Aakrosh; Tomsho, Lynn P.; Kasson, Lindsay; et al. (2010). "Complete mitochondrial genome of a Pleistocene jawbone unveils the origin of polar bear". PNAS 107 (11): 5053–5057.Bibcode:2010PNAS..107.5053L. doi:10.1073/pnas.0914266107.PMC: 2841953. PMID 20194737.
5. Jump up^ Stephen Herrero (1985). Bear Attacks, their causes and avoidance. p. 156.
6. Jump up^ "Arctic Bears". PBS Nature. 17 February 2008.
7. Jump up^ "Grizzly". Hinterland Who's Who. Retrieved March 4,2010{{inconsistent citations}}