A carnivore , or meat-eater (Latin, caro, genitive carnis, meaning meat or flesh and vorare meaning "to devour"), is an animal or plant whose nutrition and energy requirements are met by eating of animal tissues (mainly muscle, adipose tissue and other ) as food, whether through predation or scavenger.[
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Nomenclature
Mammal order
The technical term for mammals in the order Carnivora is carnivoran, and they are so-named because most member species in the group have a carnivorous diet, but the similarity of the name of the order and the name of the diet causes confusion.
Many but not all carnivorans are meat eaters; a few, such as the felidae (Felidae) are obligate carnivores whose diet requires nutrients found only in animal flesh. Other classes of carnivore are highly variable. The Ursidae (bears), for example: while the Arctic polar bear eats meat almost exclusively (more than 90% of its diet is meat), almost all other bear species are omnivore, and one species, the giant panda, is nearly exclusively herbivore.[
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Dietary carnivory is not a distinguishing trait of the order. Many mammals with highly carnivorous diets are not members of the order Carnivora. , for example, all eat other animals, but are paradoxically members of the almost exclusively plant-eating ungulate.
Carnivorous diet
Animals that depend solely on animal flesh for their nutrient requirements in nature are called or obligate carnivores, whilst those that also consume non-animal food are called , or facultative carnivores, or omnivores (there are no clear distinctions).[ A carnivore at the top of the food chain (adults not preyed upon by other animals) is termed an apex predator, regardless of whether it is an obligate or facultative carnivore. In captivity or domestic settings, obligate carnivores like cats and crocodiles can, in principle, get all their required nutrients from processed food made from plant and synthetic sources.]
Outside the animal kingdom, there are several genera containing carnivorous plants (predominantly insectivores), several phyla containing carnivorous fungi (preying mostly on microscopic , such as , amoebae, and ) and carnivorous protists.
Subcategories of carnivory
Carnivores are sometimes characterized by their type of prey. For example, animals that eat mainly and similar terrestrial are called , while those that eat mainly soft-bodied are called . Those that eat mainly fish are called .
Carnivores may alternatively be classified according to the percentage of meat in their diet. The diet of a hypercarnivore consists of more than 70% meat, that of a mesocarnivore 30–70%, and that of a hypocarnivore less than 30%, with the balance consisting of non-animal foods, such as fruit, other plant material, or fungi.
also consume both animal and non-animal food, and apart from their more general definition, there is no clearly defined ratio of plant vs. animal material that distinguishes a facultative carnivore from an omnivore.[
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Obligate carnivores
Obligate or "true" carnivores are those whose diet in the wild requires nutrients found only in animal flesh. While obligate carnivores might be able to ingestion small amounts of plant matter, they lack the necessary physiology required to fully digestion it. Some obligate carnivorous mammals will ingest vegetation as an emetic, a food that upsets their stomachs, to self-induce vomiting.[
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Obligate carnivores are diverse. The amphibian axolotl consumes mainly worms and larvae in its environment, but if necessary will consume algae. All wild Felidae, including feral domestic cat, require a diet of primarily animal flesh and organs.[ Specifically, cats have high protein requirements and their metabolisms appear unable to synthesize essential nutrients such as retinol, arginine, taurine, and arachidonic acid; thus, in nature, they must consume flesh to supply these nutrients.][
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Characteristics of carnivores
Characteristics commonly associated with carnivores include strength, speed, and keen senses for hunting, as well as teeth and claws for capturing and tearing prey. However, some carnivores do not hunt and are , lacking the physical characteristics to bring down prey; in addition, most hunting carnivores will scavenge when the opportunity arises. Carnivores have comparatively short digestive systems, as they are not required to break down the tough cellulose found in plants.
Many hunting animals have evolved eyes facing forward, enabling depth perception. This is almost universal among mammalian predators, while most reptile and amphibian predators have eyes facing sideways.
Some carnivores use powerful venom to immobilize and kill prey. Such animals include snakes, spiders, scorpions, and some wasps.
Prehistory of carnivory
Predation (the eating of one living organism by another for nutrition) predates the rise of commonly recognized carnivores by hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of years. It began with single-celled organisms that phagocytosis and digestion other cells, and later evolved into multicellular organisms with specialized cells that were dedicated to breaking down other organisms. Incomplete digestion of the prey organisms, some of which survived inside the predators in a form of endosymbiosis, might have led to symbiogenesis that gave rise to and eukaryotic such as green algae and red algae.
Proterozoic origin
The earliest predators were , which engulfed and "swallowed" other smaller cells (i.e. phagocytosis) and digested them internally. Because the earliest fossil record is poor, these first predators could date back anywhere between 1 and over 2.7 bya (billion years ago).[
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The rise of eukaryotic cells at around 2.7 bya, the rise of multicellular organisms at about 2 bya, and the rise of motile predators (around 600 Mya – 2 bya, probably around 1 bya) have all been attributed to early predatory behavior, and many very early remains show evidence of boreholes or other markings attributed to small predator species.[
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The sudden disappearance of the precambrian Ediacaran biota at the end-Ediacaran extinction, who were mostly bottom-dwelling and grazers, has been hypothetized to be partly caused by increased predation by newer animals with hardened skeleton and mouthparts.
Paleozoic
The degradation of seafloor due to the Cambrian substrate revolution led to increased active predation among animals, likely triggering various evolutionary arms races that contributed to the rapid diversification during the Cambrian explosion. Radiodont , which produced the first such as Anomalocaris, quickly became the dominant carnivores of the Cambrian sea. After their decline due to the Cambrian-Ordovician extinction event, the niches of large carnivores were taken over by nautiloid such as Cameroceras and later such as Jaekelopterus during the Ordovician and Silurian periods.
The first vertebrate carnivores appeared after the evolution of jawed fish, especially armored such as the massive Dunkleosteus. The dominance of placoderms in the Devonian ocean forced other fish to venture into other niches, and one clade of bony fish, the lobe-finned fish, became the dominant carnivores of freshwater formed by early . Some of these fish became better adapted for breathing air and eventually giving rise to amphibian . These early tetrapods were large semi-aquatic piscivores and riparian that hunt terrestrial arthropods (mainly and ), and one group in particular, the , became terrestrial apex predators that hunt other tetrapods.[
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The dominance of temnospondyls around the wetland habitats throughout the Carboniferous forced other amphibians to evolve into that had adaptations that allowed them to live farther away from water bodies. These amniotes began to evolve both carnivory, which was a natural transition from insectivory requiring minimal adaptation; and herbivory, which took advantage of the abundance of coal forest foliage but in contrast required a complex set of adaptations that was necessary for digesting on the cellulose- and lignin-rich plant materials.[ After the Carboniferous rainforest collapse, both synapsid and sauropsid amniotes quickly gained dominance as the top terrestrial animals during the subsequent Permian period. Some scientists assert that sphenacodontoid synapsids such as Dimetrodon "were the first terrestrial vertebrate to develop the curved, serrated teeth that enable a predator to eat prey much larger than itself".][
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Mesozoic
In the Mesozoic, some theropod such as Tyrannosaurus are thought probably to have been obligate carnivores.
Though the theropods were the larger carnivores, several carnivorous mammal groups were already present. Most notable are the Gobiconodontidae, the Triconodontidae Jugulator, the Deltatheroida and Cimolestes. Many of these, such as Repenomamus, Jugulator and Cimolestes, were among the largest mammals in their faunal assemblages, capable of attacking dinosaurs.[
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Cenozoic
In the early-to-mid-Cenozoic, the dominant predator forms were mammals: Hyaenodonta, Oxyaenidae, , , Arctocyonidae and , representing a great diversity of carnivores in the northern continents and Africa. In South America, Sparassodonta were dominant, while Australia saw the presence of several marsupial predators, such as the Dasyuromorphia and Thylacoleonidae. From the Miocene to the present, the dominant carnivorous mammals have been Carnivoramorpha.
Most carnivorous mammals, from to , share several dental adaptations, such as carnassial teeth, long canine tooth and even similar tooth replacement patterns.[ Most aberrant are Thylacoleonidae, with a diprodontan dentition completely unlike that of any other mammal; and eutriconodonts like gobiconodontids and Jugulator, with a three-cusp anatomy which nevertheless functioned similarly to carnassials.][
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See also
Further reading
