Hi, now we are going to discuss about characteristics of carnivores and herbivores along with their examples and we already discussed about general overview on carnivores and herbivores so if you want to know about carnivores and herbivores then it will be easy for your basic understanding about carnivores and herbivores.
Table of Contents
Characteristics of Carnivores:
- One of the major important adaptations of carnivores is their sharp pointed teeth which helps them to catch their prey and easily damage them enough so that they do not escape easily and their strong muscular jaw help them to crush the body of their prey and eat their tough fleshy body and chewing their hard bone.
- Most of the carnivore’s body is much stronger and muscular than the prey animals so that they can easily make their prey under control but their muscular jaws only show up and down movement and they are unable to move their jaw laterally.
- Most of the carnivores are able to run fast so that they can easily catch their prey and in most of the cases carnivores have soft pad on their feet so they can easily come much closer to their prey without any noise which can alert the prey to run away.
- Some carnivores have special structure to take the food easily like in case of baleen whale filter feeding mechanism is observed and they have baleen plates, chameleon, frog have special tongue which is very sticky and help them to catch different insects.
- Some carnivores have special structure and mechanism to catch their prey like venom in snakes and some species of spiders, electric shock in case of rayfish and some have pointed structure to damage the prey body.
- Digestive system in carnivores are much simpler than others animals and their digestive tract is much shorter than others animals and carnivores able to live in small amounts of food because the food they take is highly nutritive and for this reason carnivores are able to sustain long time without taking their food and most of the time they have to starve long time due to unavailability of food.
Characteristics of Herbivores:
- Herbivores eat on plant and in plant the nutrients not present in much concentrated amount so they have to eat very much and frequently to meet their minimal energy requirements.
- In herbivore digestion start after their ingestion because most of their food are rich in carbohydrates and start digesting in mouth cavity with the help of salivary enzymes but sometimes their digestion take very much time because most of the plant food are rich in cellulose which is digested slowly.
- In herbivores jaws are not very strong as compared to carnivores but they can move their jaw laterally which is not possible in case of carnivores and teeth in carnivores are specialised for cutting and chewing plant parts.
Example of Herbivores:
In reptiles herbivore are tortoise and turtle, there are many birds who are only take plant as food like parrots and goose, herbivore insects are grasshopper and butterfly, other herbivores are cow, buffalo, pig, deer, squirrel, rabbit, giraffe, zebra, elephant, some species of dinosaur was herbivores, sheep, goat, monkey are examples of herbivores.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Herbivores can digest Cellulose But Humans can not, Why?
In ruminants herbivores some microorganisms present in their digestive system which able to digest the cellulose into simple carbohydrates so herbivores can easily digest cellulose rich plant parts but human can not digest them because an enzyme cellulase is required to break down the complex cellulose into simpler carbohydrates, for this reason human can not digest cellulose and cellulose rich plant part is not for human.
Hi Everyone!!! Welcome to Imaluop. Imaluop always try to learn some new and he want to share to other people. Here we will try to learn various topics on Science, specially on Biological Sciences.