Are scavengers edible?

Argumemnon said:
Grazers have a liberal bias.
Click to expand...

Well in a way, that is true. A herbivore can eat even if wounded. It can afford to run risks. Which are the most feared animals in the savanna? Water buffaloes and rhinos.

Hans
 
MRC_Hans said:
.......... Which are the most feared animals in the savanna? Water buffaloes and rhinos.......
Click to expand...

Oooh............now we're into reading animals' minds. Dangerous territory. (Besides, water buffaloes don't live on the savannah, or in Africa at all. But you knew that... ;) )
 
Madalch said:
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.....
Click to expand...
Well known that all meats are this way...except maybe not so well known to today's youth raised on KFC and McDoubles.

It is astonishing to me how little this fast food nation remembers about real food.

I would maybe get it if the crap actually tasted good or was more efficient to produce. It's neither, so we are stuck with paying more for lower quality crap. arrrg
 
Aren't pigs scavengers? They're certainly omnivores, and pigs taste pretty damn good (if you're into that kind of thing, which I am)
 
MikeG said:
Oooh............now we're into reading animals' minds. Dangerous territory. (Besides, water buffaloes don't live on the savannah, or in Africa at all. But you knew that... ;) )
Click to expand...

AH, what are those buffaloes then?

Hans
 
MRC_Hans said:
AH, what are those buffaloes then?

Hans
Click to expand...
Pretty sure you meant cape buffaloes (African), not water buffaloes (Asian). Although there are savannas, buffalo, and rhino all in asia, They're not the kind of savanna likely to have buffalo and rhino cavorting together. That only happens in Africa.
 
Last edited:
Yep, Cape Buffaloes.

Unfortunately, with the virtual extinction of rhinos in the wild, the places you might see buffalo and rhinos together you could probably count on the fingers of one hand.
 
Of course the idea that there is some dietary reason why carnivores eat herbivores is hardly scientific. As it happens, herbivores tend to be easier to catch owing to the way they go about in the world, and carnivores, as a general rule, are likely to be harder to catch, owing to the way they, in turn, go about in the world. And among the land mammals, the way you feed and go about in the world may have a significant effect on how tough and gristly you are. But a seal will eat a penguin (which eats krill), and a sharp shinned hawk will eat a robin or a flycatcher or anything else it can swoop down on, and a mongoose will eat a snake that eats mice, and so on and so forth. Life is pretty complicated when you bother to think.

Or, as archy the cockroach said when he discoursed on the saga of the robin and the worm that gave rise to its beautiful song, "there are more things twixt the vermiform appendix and nirvana than are dreamt of in thy philosophy...."
 
bruto said:
Of course the idea that there is some dietary reason why carnivores eat herbivores is hardly scientific. As it happens, herbivores tend to be easier to catch owing to the way they go about in the world, and carnivores, as a general rule, are likely to be harder to catch, ."
Click to expand...

It can be checked by human's preferences since "easier or harder to catch" do not apply on them. Whether taste differences are there?
 
GlennB said:
Aren't pigs scavengers? They're certainly omnivores, and pigs taste pretty damn good (if you're into that kind of thing, which I am)
Click to expand...
Sure, but most of the pigs we eat are slopped with feed that doesn't include any component of rotting meat (or any meat at all, really), and even in the wild where pigs roam free they're going to end up eating mostly vegetable matter because it's going to be easily accessible.
 
Kumar said:
It can be checked by human's preferences since "easier or harder to catch" do not apply on them. Whether taste differences are there?
Click to expand...
Why? Humans are only a small part of the world's population of animals, and animals vary for many reasons. True, the difficulty of catching was probably not a sufficient reason to cite. In the world of land mammals, carnivores tend to be less plentiful and their dietary needs make them difficult livestock. Herbivores tend to be easier to hunt, herd, and domesticate, and at least some hunting animals tend to be pretty scrawny. But that does not change the fact that many animals eat carnivores. And that includes mankind in many places, especially not on land. Many of the fish we eat are carnivorous or omnivorous, as are seals, sea turtles and whales. People in many parts of the world eat dogs.
 
bruto said:
Why? Humans are only a small part of the world's population of animals, and animals vary for many reasons. True, the difficulty of catching was probably not a sufficient reason to cite. In the world of land mammals, carnivores tend to be less plentiful and their dietary needs make them difficult livestock. Herbivores tend to be easier to hunt, herd, and domesticate, and at least some hunting animals tend to be pretty scrawny. But that does not change the fact that many animals eat carnivores. And that includes mankind in many places, especially not on land. Many of the fish we eat are carnivorous or omnivorous, as are seals, sea turtles and whales. People in many parts of the world eat dogs.
Click to expand...

Is there any reason of carnivores tend to be less plentiful? Whether exitiction or logevity of survival, anyway related to carnivorous, omnivorous or Herbivores?
 
Captain_Swoop said:
A Bantam Cock can

It was a grand upstanding bantam cock,
So brisk and stiff and spry,
With springy step and jaunty plume
And a purposeful look in his eye,
In his little black blinking eye, he had.

I took him to the coop and introduced him
To my seventeen wide-eyed hens.
He tupped and he tupped as a hero tups
And he bowed from the waist to them all, and then
He upped and he tupped 'em all again, he did.

And then upon the peace of me ducks and me geese
He rudely did intrude.
With glazed eyes and open mouths
They bore it all with fortitude
And a little bit of gratitude, they did.

He jumped my giggling guinea fowl
And forced his attentions upon
My twenty hysterical turkeys and
A visiting migrant swan.
But the bantam thundered on, he did.

He ravished my fan-tailed pigeons and
Me lily-white columbines,
And while I was locking up the budgerigar
He jumped my parrot from behind;
She was sitting on me shoulder at the time.

And all of a sudden with a gasp and a gulp
He clapped his hands to his head,
Fell flat on his back with his toes in the air.
My bantam cock lay dead
And the vultures circled overhead, they did.

What a champion brute; what a noble cock;
What a way to live and to die.
I was digging him a grave to save his bones
From the hungry buzzards in the sky
When the bantam opened up a sly little eye.

He gave me a grin and a terrible wink,
The way that rapists do.
He said, "You see them big daft buggers up there?
They'll be down in a minute or two;
They'll be down in a minute or two".
Click to expand...

Jake Thackray for those curious with the music;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hQhi4oyH6k
 
Last edited:
Kumar said:
Is there any reason of carnivores tend to be less plentiful? Whether exitiction or logevity of survival, anyway related to carnivorous, omnivorous or Herbivores?
Click to expand...

For the same reason there are more blades of grass than sheep in the field.
 
bruto said:
Why? Humans are only a small part of the world's population of animals,
Click to expand...

Not that small a part. By number we're certainly outnumbered by many insect species, but by mass we about equal to the ants. I suspect that of large animals only our livestock species outweigh us in biomass, if any do at all.

For instance there are about 1.4 billion cattle in the world and they have an average weight of 750kg, so that gives us a total mass of about 1 trillion kg. Humans on the other hand weigh maybe around 500 billion kg total.

Oh wow, googling a bit I actually found that there's an XKCD for this, though it only includes land mammals, still as I suspected humans make up a pretty large proportion, and wild mammals are almost insignifcant:

land_mammals.png
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom