Obligate predator: types, characteristics and nutritional features

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:48

Representatives of wildlife have a wide variety of taste preferences and nutritional habits. For example, predators consume other organisms. But they can also differ from each other, depending on the composition of the diet. Let's find out who are obligate predators? What animals are they?

Predation in nature

In the course of evolution, living organisms have adapted in different ways to the process of obtaining energy and necessary substances. Plants, as a rule, obtain organic compounds by converting them from inorganic compounds (water, air, soil, solar heat). Animals do not know how to do this, so they are forced to consume ready-made organic substances by eating plants or other animals. Based on the diet, they are distinguished as:

• herbivores;
• carnivores;
• omnivores.

Carnivores include carnivores. They feed on animal organisms, usually attacking and killing them before doing so. Unlike parasites, scavengers, and blood-sucking species, true predators kill their prey. They can chase preywait in ambush or prepare special traps for her. Of course, in reality, everything is more complicated than in the classifications, because omnivores and scavengers also sometimes prey on other animals.

We usually associate mammals with predators - lions, tigers, foxes, wolves. However, they also include various amphibians, reptiles, birds, fish, mollusks, insects and other classes of animals. Moreover, even some fungi and higher plants are predators. For example, the Venus flytrap from the sundew family grows in the swamps of the United States and feeds on beetles, grasshoppers, spiders and butterflies. When the victim sits on her trap leaves, they quickly close, forming a cavity in which digestion occurs.

Obligate Predators

Predators can be divided into facultative and obligate. It all depends on what kind of diet they follow. Optional include those species that can go without meat for some time or often supplement it with a significant proportion of plant foods. For example, foxes and wolves are conditionally omnivores: along with birds, small mammals and fish, they often eat acorns, nuts, and berries.

Obligate carnivores can't stand the lack of meat and fish on the menu. Food of plant origin takes 5-10% of their diet. Basically, it comes to them from the stomachs of killed prey. Their body is designed to digest animal products, which is manifested in the size of the intestines, and in the level of acidity in the stomach, and in the enzymes responsible for digestion.

Important fatobligate predators assimilate acids and vitamins exclusively from meat. Therefore, the transition to a plant-based diet will result in a disorder of many body systems for them, a poor condition of the skin, coat and internal organs.

Domestic cats

Among mammals, small and big cats are a striking example of obligate predators. The hunting instinct of these animals is well developed and suggests that modern eating habits have been formed in them for a very, very long time. Tigers, lynxes, leopards, manuls - they all have sharp fangs, long claws, keen hearing and excellent attack skills.

The domestication of cats led to the fact that people stopped seeing them as predatory animals. Sometimes caring owners try to transfer their pets to a "he althy diet", including a large amount of vegetables and cereals in their diet. This does not lead to anything good, because domestic cats, like their wild counterparts, need a lot of meat and offal. Sometimes they still need plant food. For example, grass and whole grains help them cleanse the intestines of undigested food.

They get the necessary arachidonic acid from eggs, liver, kidneys, Omega-3 and Omega-6 from white fish, and the amino acid taurine from beef, tuna, turkey. Vitamin A cats are not able to synthesize from vegetables due to the lack of a special enzyme. They only get it from meat.

What does a ferret eat?

Together with weasels, ermines and minks, ferrets form a separate genus in the weasel family. These are small animalsdistributed throughout Eurasia and North America. A thousand years ago, they were domesticated to fight rats and other rodents, as well as to hunt hares. Today they have become popular pets again, but they are kept in the house for their playfulness, curiosity and cute appearance.

The ferret is an obligate predator. In nature, the basis of its diet are field mice, bird eggs and young chicks, snakes, frogs and insects. Animals that live close to settlements like to visit chickens and rabbits. They are very dexterous and courageous, they usually wait for their prey at holes, and then attack and choke.

Domestic ferrets are recommended to be fed turkey, quail, eggs, offal, blood and meat. In his saliva there is no enzyme amylase, which allows you to break down sugars and starches already in your mouth. Further processing of these substances puts a great burden on the liver and pancreas of the animal, but there is no benefit from them. Raw vegetables and fruits are needed by ferrets not as a source of nutrients, but to improve intestinal motility and microflora.

Snakes

Snakes live on every continent except Antarctica and are present in many ecological niches. They are not found only on some islands and in places with a cold arctic and subarctic climate.

All snakes are predators and feed on birds, rodents, small and large mammals. Some of them are content with a very narrow list of prey. For example, crayfish already eats mainly crayfish, only occasionally eating others.animals.

As a rule, snakes do not chew food, but swallow the victim whole. To push it, they alternately move the right and left lower jaws. Some of them have poison, which they use to paralyze their prey. Non-poisonous species strangle prey with a strong muscular body. Large pythons and boas can kill and swallow even a puma or a hyena, but are usually content with medium-sized prey.

Ants

Only a small part of ants does not pose a threat to other animals. So, leaf cutters feed exclusively on fungal hyphae and even grow them in their homes. However, most ants are predators. Attacking the victim in a large group, they can cope not only with a caterpillar, cicada or beetle, but also with a frog and a small snake.

Wandering ants that live in the tropics of America and Africa are especially aggressive. They do not build permanent houses, but make temporary dwellings underground. In one place, "nomads" stay for several weeks, and then look for a new haven. They paralyze the prey with poison, and then pull it to pieces.