Are scavengers edible?

Yeggster said:
Icelandic delicacies include popping open a can of surströmming in brine too though :)
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Don't they also eat rancid shark meat or something? I hear it's an acquired taste.

Or am I conflating the northern ethnicities?
 
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Varanid said:
I don't understand optics/photography well, but I think that if you use a really long zoom lens, you lose depth of field.
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Right idea, wrong name.

What you're thinking of is the ability to distinguish distances from the camera. This goes down when you're zooming in from a long distance; things seem to be closer together than they really are, along the direction the camera's pointed. I don't think that has a special term.

The "field" in "depth of field" is the focus field, which is the range of distances from the camera at which things can be called in-focus; anything too close or too far is outside the focus field, which makes it blurry. If that middle zone where things are in focus encompasses a wide range of different distances (relative to the overall range of distances for the objects in the picture), then lots of the picture it likely to be in focus, and the field is said to have great depth; if it only encompasses a narrow range of distances (relative to teh overall range of distances for the objects in the picture), then a smaller fraction of the stuff in the image will be in focus and you're more likely to have significant out-of-focus parts, and the field is said to have little depth. Typically, close-ups tend to have shallower focus fields (to such an extent that it's nearly impossible to avoid having significant parts of a close-up shot out of focus) and long shots tend to have deeper ones (to such an extent that practically everything in the picture seems equally perfectly focused), because of parallax, although you can either combat or exaggerate that effect with camera settings. Obviously, though, this only affects how clearly we can see the cheetah or vultures, not how close or far apart they seem.

* * *

Not only does chasing pests too much cost energy and pull you farther away from the food that you already know is ready for the eating right there with practically no more new effort, but catching one also might mean getting exposed to whatever it could have picked up from previous meals that weren't as fresh as the one you just killed. Vultures' heads are bald so they can stick them all the way inside rotting animals, and they don't wash afterward.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Don't they also eat rancid shark meat or something? I hear it's an acquired taste.

Or am I conflating the northern ethnicities?
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Not rancid, but fermented and dried:

Kæstur hákarl

Kæstur hákarl (Icelandic pronunciation: ​[ˈhauːkʰardl̥]) (Icelandic for "fermented shark") is a national dish of Iceland consisting of a Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus) or other sleeper shark which has been cured with a particular fermentation process and hung to dry for four to five months. Kæstur hákarl has a strong ammonia-rich smell and fishy taste.
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It must be good:

Chef Anthony Bourdain described kæstur hákarl as "the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing" he has ever eaten.
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I have a vague memory from a high school biology class of my teacher saying something about why predators usually only eat herbivores, rather than other carnivores. Something about energy gradients in a food chain...

I'm not sure why this doesn't apply to seafood.
 
Delvo said:
What you're thinking of is the ability to distinguish distances from the camera. This goes down when you're zooming in from a long distance; things seem to be closer together than they really are, along the direction the camera's pointed. I don't think that has a special term.
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Perspective distortion?
 
Brainache said:
I have a vague memory from a high school biology class of my teacher saying something about why predators usually only eat herbivores, rather than other carnivores. Something about energy gradients in a food chain...

I'm not sure why this doesn't apply to seafood.
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Predators might avoid other predators because they are dangerous to hunt, but generally I would think predators seek herbivores because there are more of them. Basically every step up the food chain loses about 90% of energy, so things at the bottom of the food chain tend to be a lot more numerous. Also large vs small tends to correlate with rare vs. numerous.
 
One more reason that a cat will not try to kill scavengers - the cat would be tired from killing the animal it wants to eat. Both parties know there would be enough food for both of them. The birds just need to wait for their own turn.
 
casebro said:
Lobsters sure are.
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Nom nom.

Captain_Swoop said:
I like a Crab
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More nom nom.

Captain_Swoop said:
Not true, She can eat her swans. Some swans are 'owned' by the London Livery Companies, they can serve them. there is a ceremony every year on the Thames where they catch swans and mark them with their ownership.
I think Swan is served in some of the Oxford Colleges as well at High Table.
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We obviously move in different circles. I do like a nice bit of chicken.
 
MRC_Hans said:
...

Do vultures taste very bad or something?

Hans
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Is taste similar across species? Would a cheetah necessarily like/hate something that a human likes/hates? (No idea what the answer may be!)

I know there's many things we can eat that would make a dog ill, so there's that. But of course since that is only if the dog eats it, and if it does, then probably it does that because it doesn't hate the taste.

Incidentally, I've found that shark tastes pretty much okay. (Tried it just the once.) And sharks are carnivores.

Besides, there are cases of cannibalism in many species (with the mother eating the young, for instance, as well as more ...interesting variations). So I suppose yes, carnivores are edible.
 
Delvo said:
Right idea, wrong name.

What you're thinking of is the ability to distinguish distances from the camera. This goes down when you're zooming in from a long distance; things seem to be closer together than they really are, along the direction the camera's pointed. I don't think that has a special term.

The "field" in "depth of field" is the focus field, which is the range of distances from the camera at which things can be called in-focus; anything too close or too far is outside the focus field, which makes it blurry. If that middle zone where things are in focus encompasses a wide range of different distances (relative to the overall range of distances for the objects in the picture), then lots of the picture it likely to be in focus, and the field is said to have great depth; if it only encompasses a narrow range of distances (relative to teh overall range of distances for the objects in the picture), then a smaller fraction of the stuff in the image will be in focus and you're more likely to have significant out-of-focus parts, and the field is said to have little depth. Typically, close-ups tend to have shallower focus fields (to such an extent that it's nearly impossible to avoid having significant parts of a close-up shot out of focus) and long shots tend to have deeper ones (to such an extent that practically everything in the picture seems equally perfectly focused), because of parallax, although you can either combat or exaggerate that effect with camera settings. Obviously, though, this only affects how clearly we can see the cheetah or vultures, not how close or far apart they seem.

* * *

Not only does chasing pests too much cost energy and pull you farther away from the food that you already know is ready for the eating right there with practically no more new effort, but catching one also might mean getting exposed to whatever it could have picked up from previous meals that weren't as fresh as the one you just killed. Vultures' heads are bald so they can stick them all the way inside rotting animals, and they don't wash afterward.
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Thanks for the correction/info. Makes sense.
 
Bear varies depending on what it's been eating. If it's been eating berries, it's delicious. If it's been spending the last week gnawing on the rotting carcass of an elk, it tastes like rotting carcass.....
 
The Don said:
....and some fish probably...
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Don't they feed farmed tuna with sardines in those huge open sea cages?

Which I consider a waste - I prefer sardines, grilled or canned or fried or cooked - over tuna every day of the week.
 
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