Thought of something else: Most mother mammals eat the placenta after giving birth, and a placenta is chock full of carnivorian goodness. The doe annacyn saw was just continuing what she had started when the fawn was born. Plus it’s free meat, calcium, and vitamins–just the thing to perk mom up after a long pregnancy.
My dad’s bunny goes insane over fruit loops and veggie straws and I don’t think either contains much in the way of actual fruits or veggies.
Won’t frogs eat just about anything they can fit in their mouths?
Chimps will engage in cannibalism. I saw a nature documentary which featured a group of chimps attacking a rival troup. In the process, they killed a baby chimp (the documentary did not show the actual killing, altho I’m kinda curious as to how they did it).
What they did show, however, was the victorious chimps eating meat from their victim :eek:
My ornithologist friend spends most of her time doing fieldwork, and a big part of that is locating (by ‘chipping’) and banding baby songbirds. Deer are notorious for eating them, both out of the nest and as fledglings. They’re a rather serious predator, to hear her tell it.
Herbivores are adapted to surviving on low-nutrient vegetation, and therefore don’t have the physical characteristics to hunt and kill for their daily needs. But that doesn’t mean that they won’t take every opportunity they can to eat other animals, which are much higher in calories, vitamins, and minerals and much faster to digest (a deer spends a great deal of time fermenting the fiber in the grass, leaves, and bark it eats, in order to fulfill it’s needs for fat and protein - which it derives from various types of symbiotic bacteria in its digestive tract).