By type of nutrition, all living organisms are divided into autotrophs and heterotrophs. The first include plants and some bacteria that receive organic matter through photosynthesis or chemosynthesis. Heterotrophs are those organisms that eat ready-made organic compounds. These include mushrooms and animals. The latter are herbivorous or carnivorous.
What are predators?
These are living organisms that hunt and eat other creatures. These are animals, bacteria, and even some plants.
Predator animals
All animals are divided into unicellular and multicellular. The latter are represented by such main types as Intestinal, Worms, Mollusks, Arthropods, Echinoderms, Chordates. Chordates include fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals. Examples of predation in nature exist in each of the animal classes.
Carnivorous Arthropods
This type of cash box includes: Crustacean, Arachnid, Millipedes and Insects. A vivid example of predation among arthropods is mantis. He can hunt small lizards, frogs, and even birds and rodents. Ground beetle is also an example of arthropod predation. It feeds on other insects, earthworms, mollusks, and larvae of various beetles. The fly-ktyr also leads a predatory lifestyle: it eats dragonflies, wasps, and race-beetles. Almost all spiders also feed on insects, mainly flies. In spiders, the largest are tarantulas and tarantulas. They have poison with which they paralyze their victims. The first, in addition to birds, can feed on rats and other large rodents. The second mainly eats large insects, such as ground beetles, various beetles, crickets, as well as caterpillars and larvae. A striking example of predation in millipedes is the scolopendra.
Predator fish
Fish that feed on other large representatives of the fauna are both freshwater and marine. The first include pike, zander, perch, ruff. Pike - the largest freshwater predator, its weight can reach more than thirty kilograms. She feeds on smaller fish.
Pikeperch is also an example of predation in freshwater fish. It is also large, its weight is twenty kilograms, and the average length is 130 cm. Its diet consists of smaller predators: ruffs, roaches, as well as gobies, minnows and other small fish. Among marine predatory fish , a great white shark (carharadon) and barracuda are distinguished. The first is the largest predatory fish in the world; it eats fur seals, seals, sea otters, sea turtles, tuna, mackerel, and sea bass. In some cases, it can attack people. White sharks have several rows of teeth, the total number of which can reach 1500 pieces. Barracudas also reach impressive sizes - their average length is two meters. The main part of their diet consists of shrimp, squid, smaller fish. This fish is also called pike.
Bird world
The lifestyle and way of eating most large birds is predation. Examples of animals of this class that prey on other living creatures: hawks, golden eagles, falcons, owls, snake eaters, kites, condors, eagles, kestrels.
Mammal predators
This class is divided into twenty one squad. Predatory animals of this group stand out in the squad of the same name. Mostly well-known families belong to it, there are thirteen of them - Canids, Feline, Bear, Hyena, Cunyi, Pandovy, Skunk, Real Seals, Eared Seals, Walrus, Viverrova, Madagascar Viverra, Nandinieva. Dogs include dogs, wolves, foxes, arctic foxes, jackals.
The diet of all these animals consists mainly of small mammals, for example, hares, rodents, as well as birds. Some of them feed on carrion - these are jackals, wolves. Feline cats include tigers, lions, pallas, leopards, caracals, ocelots, lynxes, etc. They eat small mammals, mainly rodents, sometimes feed on fish and insects. The bear menu may include both meat and vegetable foods: berries, other fruits, roots of different plants. Seals and walruses prey on fish and some invertebrates. Animals such as genets, African civets are also considered to be wyverns. They feed on birds, small animals, birds, invertebrates, bird eggs.
The Madagascar wiverra family includes various types of mungo. Their menu includes insects and scorpions. The Nandinians belong to one single species - palm civet. She preys on mice and rats, large insects. The
Kunya family includes martens, badgers, minks, ferrets, they eat chicks and bird eggs.
Examples of predation in the plant world
Most plants are autotrophs. They extract their nutrients exclusively through photosynthesis, in which, by absorbing solar energy, carbon dioxide and water, they receive organic substances (mainly glucose) from them and release oxygen as a by-product.
But among them there are predators that feed on insects, because where they live, there is not enough light to live only through photosynthesis. These include venus flytraps, sundews, nepenthes, sarracenia.