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Various carnivorans, with feliforms to the left, and caniforms to the right. Carnivora is an order of placental mammals that have specialized in primarily eating flesh. Members of this order are called carnivorans, or colloquially carnivores, though the term more properly refers to any meat-eating organisms, and some carnivoran species are omnivores or herbivores.
Lions are obligate carnivores consuming only animal flesh for their nutritional requirements.. A carnivore / ˈ k ɑːr n ɪ v ɔːr /, or meat-eater (Latin, caro, genitive carnis, meaning meat or "flesh" and vorare meaning "to devour"), is an animal or plant whose nutrition and energy requirements are met by consumption of animal tissues (mainly muscle, fat and other soft tissues) as food ...
Due to a herbivore's ability to survive solely on tough and fibrous plant matter, they are termed the primary consumers in the food cycle (chain). Herbivory, carnivory, and omnivory can be regarded as special cases of consumer–resource interactions .
Within an ecological food chain, consumers are categorized into primary consumers, secondary consumers, and tertiary consumers. [3] Primary consumers are herbivores, feeding on plants or algae. Caterpillars, insects, grasshoppers, termites and hummingbirds are all examples of primary consumers because they only eat autotrophs (plants).
Herbivores and carnivores are examples of organisms that obtain carbon and electrons or hydrogen from living organic matter. Chemoorganotrophs are organisms which use the chemical energy in organic compounds as their energy source and obtain electrons or hydrogen from the organic compounds, including sugars (i.e. glucose ), fats and proteins. [ 2 ]
Oligophagy is a term for intermediate degrees of selectivity, referring to animals that eat a relatively small range of foods, either because of preference or necessity. [2] Another classification refers to the specific food animals specialize in eating, such as: Carnivore: the eating of animals Araneophagy: eating spiders; Avivore: eating birds
A red fox (Vulpes vulpes) eating a rodent—an example of a mesocarnivoreA mesocarnivore is an animal whose diet consists of 30–70% meat with the balance consisting of non-vertebrate foods which may include insects, fungi, fruits, other plant material and any food that is available to them. [1]
In the simplest scheme, the first trophic level (level 1) is plants, then herbivores (level 2), and then carnivores (level 3). The trophic level equals one more than the chain length, which is the number of links connecting to the base. The base of the food chain (primary producers or detritivores) is set at zero.