It's not uncommon for a lot of animals the general public thinks of as either cute/docile and vegetarian as otherwise omnivorous. Cows and horses are the easy one because they will quite literally hoover up small enough animals like mice and birds, but then you get onto things like woodpeckers which use their bills to burrow into the brains of larger bird chicks while still stuck in their nests.
"Nature is metal" is the subreddit/trope name for good reasons.
Explaining how mice will eat their own young if their nest is discovered by a predator is always a grim one. Sure mice will eat insects, worms, molusc, and other things in general, but explaining cannibalism in order to reclaim the energy spent producing the brood rather than leave it to waste or the predator is a special kind of horror for many.
Well dang, I once discovered a nest of rat pups in a box while moving stuff in a garage, and I smashed them with a brick out of spite. Guess I was just pre-masticating them for their mother.
Cows contract bovine tb from badgers when they nibble on dead badgers infected with the disease. They do this because like sharks and many other animals they have nothing but their mouths to investigate their surroundings. This leads to the other thing.
Eating small animals is really just a question of scale, and in general comes down to opportunistic protein gain in otherwise herbivorous animals. Mice and similarly sized species are like humans eating a sweet such as maltesers, small enough to swallow whole but still large enough to chomp once.
In general if an animal is large enough to eat a smaller one, especially much smaller ones, it will.
Nature shows are at best educational pieces for families and schoolchildren and at worst made up, so the more brutal aspects of nature are often skipped or at least only briefly covered with very skewed interpretations of what is happening.
Adult male lions will kill and eat the cubs of a pride without a male in order to both remove genetic competition and induce heat in the lionesses to then produce his own offspring.
Some sharks not only give birth to live young but those that are birthed will have already killed and consumed some of their siblings who were weaker.
Some parasitoids will infect a host with not only eggs that will eventually hatch and consume them from the inside out, but also behavioural changes to protect the eggs in the mean time.
Cane toads will try to eat anything they can get in their mouths, including other cane toads. They can even die in the attempt when literally biting off more than they can chew.
I've heard the lions and shark stuff. I'm assuming that's widely told to add to the allure of those predators. Never heard of cows or horses eating meat, it's blowing my mind.
I've seen a deer eat a bird. I dunno how it got one, if it was a chick that fell out of nest, or if the bird was dead, but the deer was munching on it, bones, feathers and all.
I'm surprised this is the first time. As far as I know, it's not uncommon for chipmunks to eat frogs, and they're basically squirrels.
It's not uncommon for a lot of animals the general public thinks of as either cute/docile and vegetarian as otherwise omnivorous. Cows and horses are the easy one because they will quite literally hoover up small enough animals like mice and birds, but then you get onto things like woodpeckers which use their bills to burrow into the brains of larger bird chicks while still stuck in their nests.
"Nature is metal" is the subreddit/trope name for good reasons.
Explaining how mice will eat their own young if their nest is discovered by a predator is always a grim one. Sure mice will eat insects, worms, molusc, and other things in general, but explaining cannibalism in order to reclaim the energy spent producing the brood rather than leave it to waste or the predator is a special kind of horror for many.
Well dang, I once discovered a nest of rat pups in a box while moving stuff in a garage, and I smashed them with a brick out of spite. Guess I was just pre-masticating them for their mother.
Cows and horses eat other animals??!! I had no idea that happened.
Cows contract bovine tb from badgers when they nibble on dead badgers infected with the disease. They do this because like sharks and many other animals they have nothing but their mouths to investigate their surroundings. This leads to the other thing.
Eating small animals is really just a question of scale, and in general comes down to opportunistic protein gain in otherwise herbivorous animals. Mice and similarly sized species are like humans eating a sweet such as maltesers, small enough to swallow whole but still large enough to chomp once.
In general if an animal is large enough to eat a smaller one, especially much smaller ones, it will.
No shit. Nobody talks about this is nature shows.
Nature shows are at best educational pieces for families and schoolchildren and at worst made up, so the more brutal aspects of nature are often skipped or at least only briefly covered with very skewed interpretations of what is happening.
Adult male lions will kill and eat the cubs of a pride without a male in order to both remove genetic competition and induce heat in the lionesses to then produce his own offspring.
Some sharks not only give birth to live young but those that are birthed will have already killed and consumed some of their siblings who were weaker.
Some parasitoids will infect a host with not only eggs that will eventually hatch and consume them from the inside out, but also behavioural changes to protect the eggs in the mean time.
Cane toads will try to eat anything they can get in their mouths, including other cane toads. They can even die in the attempt when literally biting off more than they can chew.
Nature is very creative. Brutal, but creative.
Don't forget the horror of hyena birth.
I've heard the lions and shark stuff. I'm assuming that's widely told to add to the allure of those predators. Never heard of cows or horses eating meat, it's blowing my mind.
They're only Mostly Vegan
Deer will snatch birds off bird feeders and eat them.
Bullfrogs man. They'll eat snakes, fish, mice, ducklings, each other.
I actually didn't know about any of those. Wew lad
Are we REALLY going to live in a world now where THIS could actually relate to reality?
There has been evidence of this for a while now.
https://youtu.be/hRiRyopVm6Q
The entire state is becoming more feral by the moment, it's like an SCP.
It certainly houses enough sexual predators.
Did uou know they're almost at 9,000 now?
Lol
I've seen a deer eat a bird. I dunno how it got one, if it was a chick that fell out of nest, or if the bird was dead, but the deer was munching on it, bones, feathers and all.