I recall discussions in my high school Biology classes. Hippopotamuses are classed as herbivores. There’s been debates for years whether they ate meat. Generally a herbivore like a cow or horse would never touch meat. Their digestive system can’t handle meat.
Caught on Camera. A Hippo faces down a lion and dines on elephant. The hippo looks pretty well fed to me. This doesn’t seem to be an act of desperation. Especially taking food away from a lion and her cubs. That’s pretty bold.
Its one of those WTH moments in nature. I guess its a good thing hippos normally prefer grass. I’d hate to have that big thing stalking me for dinner. :eek:
We’ve had threads on this before, and the consensus is that virtually no animal is truly an exclusive vegetarian. Grazing animals may eat mice or baby birds, for example. The flip side is true too - few carnivores are truly exclusive meat eaters.
The issue is whether the animal is well-suited to digesting meat and whether they can obtain it on a regular basis.
I can’t provide a cite but I read somewhere that hippos are considered more dangerous than lions. They kill more people than the carnivorous predators in Africa.
I can’t post a link from work, but recently on Cracked there was a video segment showing what are generally thought of as herbivore eating meat including a cow eating a live baby chick, a dear eating a wounded bird, other dear eating carion, and a rabit eating a crow. Apparently, many animals are opportunistic omnivores.
People like to create simple, sharply defined categories. Nature doesn’t.
We categorize most animals as either “carnivores” or “herbivores” and expect all but a few animals (bears, raccoons, et al) to fall into one of those categories.
Similarly, we divide carnivores into admirable “predators” (yay!) and contemptible “scavengers” (boo!).
In reality, nature doesn’t make such neat distinctions. In reality, most “scavengers” (hyenas, jackals, buzzards, et al) hunt and kill live prey at least occasionally. And very few “predators” (lions, wolves, eagles, whatever) will shun a carrion dinner if it’s available.
In the same way, MANY animals that mostly eat plants will gladly eat meat if it’s available. Deer will eat carrion if they stumble upon it. Rabbits will pounce on a live lizard and eat it if they see one. Now and then, cows and horses will eat small birds that wander by.
I hadn’t heard of hippos eating meat, but it doesn’t shock me a bit.
You rooted for the predator on Wild Kingdom? I hear it was mostly the camerapeople who were rooting for the lion to win because it happened so rarely and it meant they could stop filming
Okay, perhaps “admirable” is the wrong word, but animals perceived as “scavengers” have always been scorned, can we agree on that? In The Lion King, to use one pop culture example, the predatory lions are seen as noble, if dangerous. Meanwhile, the scavenging hyenas were depicted as the lowest of the low.
My point was merely this: it’s NOT that simple. Lions who stumble upon a dead, rotting zebra will eat it as quickly as a hyena or buzzard or jackal would. And hyenas are very good pack hunters. The dividing line between “Predator” and “Scavenger” isn’t that clear.
And neither is the line between “herbivore” and “carnivore.”
I think we do this subconsciously because the most “admired” predators, being generally from the wolf and cat families, seem closest to our most popular pets in appearance and habits. With most scavenger mammals, this is decidedly less so.
I’ve posted this before - I read a publication by IIRC the Canadian Museum of Nature on North American mammals, which noted that years of field studies showed that polar bears were the only such animals observed to be strict carnivores and woodchucks the only strict herbivores. I particularly remember a reference to a herd of caribou snarfing up migrating lemmings by the dozens.
While most animals are optimized for certain types of foods, in behaviour and/or physiologically, pretty much all of them will eat other stuff if it is readily available. In many cases, such as the caribou example, it is believed that this is a way to obtain scarce trace nutrients, such as the extra calcium needed for antler growth, more than for food calories as such. Caribou will also gnaw on discarded antlers and bones for the same reason.
is that a movie quote that I haven’t heard before?
