Animal feeding behaviour

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Many animals have evolved to take in particular types of food and can be classified by their diets

Feeding is the process by which organisms, typically animals, obtain food. There are many types of feeding that animals exhibit, including:

• filter feeding - obtaining food suspended in the water column
• deposit feeding - obtaining food particles in soil
• fluid feeding - obtaining food by consuming other organisms fluids
• bulk feeding - obtaining food by eating pieces of other organisms or swallowing them whole
• phagocytosis - engulfing food with cell membrane

Another classification refers to the food groups some animals specialize in, such as:

• Carnivore - meat
• Detritivore - decomposing material
• Folivore - leaves
• Frugivore - fruits
• Granivore - seeds
• Herbivore - plants
• Insectivore - insects
• Nectarivore - nectar
• Omnivore - plants and meat
• Piscivore - fishes
• Sanguinivore - blood
• Saprovore - dead matter

There are also several food sources which have caused the development of specialized feeding behaviors, such as:

• Ophiophagy: feeding on snakes
• Hematophagy: feeding on blood
• Coprophagy: feeding on faeces
• Cannibalism: feeding on members of the same species (anthropophagy is the proper scientific term for human cannibalism)
• Trophallaxis: regurgitation of food to another animal
• Paedophagy: feeding on the young of other species
• Lepidophagy: of fish, feeding on the scales of other fish

In many instances, the specialization of organisms in a specific type of food source has been one of the major causes of evolution of form and function, such as:

• mouth parts and teeth, such as in whales, vampire bats, leeches, mosquitos, predatory animals such as felines and fishes, etc
• distinct forms of beaks in birds, such as in hawks, woodpeckers, pelicans, hummingbirds, parrots, kingfishers, etc.
• specialized claws and other appendages, for apprehending or killing (including fingers in primates
• changes in body colour for facilitating camouflage, disguise, setting up traps for preys, etc.
• changes in the digestive system, such as the system of stomachs of herbivores, commensalism and symbiosis

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Contents 1 See also 2 References & Bibliography 3 Key texts 3.1 Books 3.2 Papers 4 Additional material 4.1 Books 4.2 Papers 5 External links

[edit] See also

• Animal foraging behaviour
• Animal maternal behaviour
• Animal paternal behavior
• Feeding practices
• Food intake
• Hunger
• Ingestion
• Sucking

[edit] References & Bibliography

[edit] Key texts

[edit] Books

[edit] Papers

[edit] Additional material

[edit] Books

[edit] Papers

• Google Scholar

[edit] External links

v·d·e Feeding behaviours
Carnivores	{| class="navbox collapsible nowraplinks" style="margin:auto; background:white;background:white;"
[[[:Template:Fullurl:Template:]] v]·[[[:Template:Fullurl:Template talk:]] d]·[[[:Template:Fullurl:Template:]] e]
adult	Hematophagy · Insectivore · Lepidophagy · Man-eater · Molluscivore · Mucophagy · Myrmecophagy · Ophiophagy · Piscivore · Spongivore
reproductive	Oophagy · Ovophagy · Paedophagy · Placentophagy · Breastfeeding · Weaning
cannibalistic	Cannibalism · Human cannibalism · Self-cannibalism · Sexual cannibalism

| rowspan="4" style="vertical-align:middle; padding-left:7px; width:0%;" | File:Hawk eating prey cropped.jpg
|- style="white-space:nowrap;background:#ddddff;text-align:right;" ! Herbivores | colspan="1" style="text-align:left;width:100%;font-size:95%;background:#f7f7f7;line-height:1.5em;" | Folivore · Frugivore · Graminivore · Granivore · Nectarivore · Palynivore · Xylophagy · Osteophagy
|- style="white-space:nowrap;background:#ddddff;text-align:right;" ! Others | colspan="1" style="text-align:left;width:100%;font-size:95%;line-height:1.5em;" | Phagocytosis · Bacterivore · Coprophagia · Detritivore · Fungivore · Geophagy · Omnivore
|- style="white-space:nowrap;background:#ddddff;text-align:right;" ! Methods | colspan="1" style="text-align:left;width:100%;font-size:95%;background:#f7f7f7;line-height:1.5em;" | Apex predator · Bottom feeding · Browsing  ·Hypercarnivore · Filter feeding · Grazing · Kleptoparasitism · Scavenging · Trophallaxis
|- style="text-align:center;background:#ddddff;" | colspan="3" | Predation · Antipredator adaptation · Carnivorous plant · Carnivorous fungus · Carnivorous protist · Category:Eating behaviors |}

This page uses content from the English-language version of Wikipedia. The original article was at Feeding. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Psychology Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.