How Animals Find Food

All animals need to eat. Food gives energy to grow, build homes, raise babies, and protect against danger. But each animal has its own kind of food and special way of finding it.

Some animals eat only plants, fruits, or seeds. They're called herbivores. Giraffes eat mostly leaves. With their long necks and tongues, they reach high up into the trees. Cows, zebras, tortoises, and kangaroos are grazers. They eat grasses and other plants low to the ground.

Animals that eat other animals are called carnivores. A fox is a carnivore. It must move quickly and make sharp turns to catch the mice and other small animals it hunts.

Condors are scavengers. They eat the remains of animals killed by other carnivores. They like leftovers.

Animals that eat both plants and animals are called omnivores. Black bears eat whatever they can find during the different seasons of the year, including berries, fish, mushrooms, birds, small rodents, and insects. Having a lot of things they like to eat helps them get enough food.

Plant eaters, meat eaters, and scavengers are parts of a food chain. Gnus graze for grasses. A pack of hyenas kills and eats a gnu. And vultures eat the remains of the gnu that the hyenas leave behind. The food chain is nature's way of giving each animal the energy it needs.

Sometimes you can tell how an animal gets its food just by looking at it. Many carnivores have knifelike claws and teeth to catch their food. Tigers use their long claws and sharp teeth to both catch a deer and eat it.

Bird beaks come in many shapes and sizes. A pelican's bill scoops up fish out of the water.

An eagle's beak tears meat into pieces small enough to swallow.

A woodpecker's beak chips away at wood to make holes to store acorns, seek insects, or suck out sap.

Chameleons move very slowly, but their tongues are very fast. Their bodies change color, helping them to blend into their surroundings. When an insect comes close, the chameleon shoots out its long, sticky tongue and pulls the insect into its mouth. GULP!

Spiders spin webs to trap the insects they eat, but there are many different ways to make a web. The ogre-faced spider spins a net made of silk and waits upside down for an insect to pass near. Then it drops the net onto the insect and catches it.

Often animals that live together work together to get food. A pod of humpback whales blows a net of bubbles to drive a school of fish close together. Then the whales swim through the fish, swallowing many at a time.

What animals eat determines how they look and how and where they live. Koalas are picky eaters. They eat only eucalyptus leaves, so they live in forests of eucalyptus trees in Australia.

But raccoons will eat whatever they can find. They live in forests, along streams, or even in your backyard.

Some animals are hunters, and some are hunted. Some even know clever tricks. Floating on its back, a sea otter opens a mussel shell by smashing it against a flat stone on its chest.

But every animal, everywhere, eats.

Copyright Carus Publishing Company Apr 2004
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved