Education

What Is A Carnivore?

What Is A Carnivore? What Do Carnivores Eat?

A carnivore is an animal that survives mostly by eating other animals. A carnivorous animal that hunts and kills other animals in order to eat them is called a predator.

Lions In Kenya's Masai Mara. Photo: Siddharth Maheshwari
Lions In Kenya’s Masai Mara. Photo: Siddharth Maheshwari

Some predators are further categorized based on the kinds of creatures they hunt and eat. For instance, an insect-catching animal is said to be insectivorous, while one that chases fish is piscivorous. A predator at the very top of the food chain is known as an apex predator. Eagles and other winged and feathered predators are called raptors.

A carnivorous animal that mainly eats animals that have have died of natural causes, or that have been killed by other animals, is called a scavenger.

In addition, some carnivorous creatures such as mosquitoes, lice, fleas, ticks, and vampires survive not by consuming the flesh of other animals, but by eating their blood. These carnivores are called ectoparasites.

Related Articles

Check Also
Close
Back to top button