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.
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.