What is the difference between predators and carnivores

An ecosystem must provide abundant plants to sustain herbivores, and many of them spend the majority of their lives eating to stay alive. If plant availability declines, herbivores may not have enough to eat. This could cause a decline in herbivore numbers, which would also impact carnivores. Herbivores usually have special biological systems to digest a variety of different plants.

Their teeth also have special designs that enable them to rip off the plants and then grind them up with flat molars. Omnivores have an advantage in an ecosystem because their diet is the most diverse.

These animals can vary their diet depending on the food that is most plentiful, sometimes eating plants and other times eating meat. Herbivores have different digestive systems than omnivores, so omnivores usually cannot eat all of the plants that an herbivore can. Omnivores will also hunt both carnivores and herbivores for meat, including small mammals, reptiles, and insects.

Large omnivores include bears and humans. Examples of medium-sized omnivores include raccoons and pigs. Small omnivores include some fish and insects such as flies. Omnivore teeth often resemble carnivore teeth because of the need for tearing meat.

Help your class explore food chains and webs with these resources. A carnivore is an organism that eats mostly meat, or the flesh of animals. Sometimes carnivores are called predators. A scavenger is an organism that consumes mostly decaying biomass, such as meat or rotting plant matter. An omnivore is an organism that eats a variety of other organisms, including plants, animals, and fungi. Join our community of educators and receive the latest information on National Geographic's resources for you and your students.

Skip to content. Image Venus Flytrap Catches Housefly The Venus flytrap Dionaea muscipula is likely the best known of around species of carnivorous plants. Twitter Facebook Pinterest Google Classroom. Encyclopedic Entry Vocabulary. Media Credits The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit.

Media If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. Text Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service. Interactives Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. Related Resources. Food Chains and Webs. The prey is running for its life. If the predator fails to capture the prey, it goes hungry, but it will not experience a large decline in fitness as a result of the interaction.

In contrast, if the predator catches the prey, the captured individual loses any future opportunities to reproduce.

In this race, the prey experience strong selective pressure to evolve better adaptations to avoid being eaten. At the same time, predators must capture sufficient food to survive and reproduce, and they too are subjected to selective pressure for traits that allow them to hunt successfully. Over time, this arms race leads to traits that enable prey to better avoid capture, whereas predators become better able to capture prey.

Figure 2: Aposematic coloration Brightly colored animals, such as the red-spotted newt a and monarch butterfly b , warn potential predators against consumption. Such organisms contain toxins.

In contrast to the examples provided thus far, some prey exhibit bright coloration. Such aposematic coloration helps prevent predation by signaling to potential predators that the vividly-colored individual is toxic.

Toxins may be manufactured within the body, as with the red-spotted newt, or they may be acquired passively via consumption of toxic plants, as with the monarch butterfly Figure 2. Figure 3: Batesian mimicry Non-toxic Papilio dardanus swallowtail butterfly females occur in a variety of forms, each of which mimics the physical appearance of toxic species. Not all species that exhibit vivid coloration are truly toxic.

Some have evolved patterns and colors that mimic those of toxic species. Examples of such Batesian mimicry include the extraordinarily polymorphic Papilio dardanus swallowtail butterfly in southern Africa and Madagascar Salvato Females of this species occur in a wide variety of physical appearances, nearly all of which mimic distasteful species of the Danaeus and Amauris genera with which they co-occur Figure 3.

In parasitism, an individual organism, the parasite, consumes nutrients from another organism, its host, resulting in a decrease in fitness to the host. In extreme cases, parasites can cause disease in the host organism; in these situations, we refer to them as pathogens. We divide parasites into two categories: endoparasites, which live inside the body of their hosts, and ectoparasites, which live and feed on the outside of the body of their host.

Examples of endoparasites include flukes, tapeworms, fungi, bacteria, and protozoa. Ectoparasites include ticks and lice, plants, protozoa, bacteria, and fungi. Plants and animals typically act as hosts. In most situations, parasites do not kill their hosts. An exception, however, occurs with parasitoids, which blur the line between parasitism and predation. The best-known parasitoids include several species of wasp, which immobilize — but do not kill — a host by stinging it. After the larvae hatch, they consume the living tissues of the host, eventually killing it Figure 4a.

Figure 4: Parasitoidism A parastic wasp stings its prey before laying eggs on or in it a. The larvae will consume the insect after hatching. The fruiting bodies of entomogenous fungi extend from the insect it consumed b. Spores circulate inside the host, whose body provides the nutrients needed for fungal growth. Eventually, the fungal load becomes too great for the host, and the insect dies Figure 4b. The major distinguishing difference between parasitoids and predators is that parasitoids feed on living tissue, whereas the predator kills its prey before, or in the process of, consuming it.

For all parasites, the host exists as an island of habitat. But the island lives for a finite period of time, and the parasites must find a new host before the existing one dies. Transmission to a new host can happen either directly, or through a vector. In direct transmission, the parasite moves from one host to another of the same species without an intermediate organism. In vector transmission, an intermediate organism, the vector, transfers the parasite from one host to the next.

Figure 5: Complex life cycle of the Plasmodium parasite The life cycle requires both the primary human host and the intermediate Anopheles mosquito host for completion. Many endoparasites have a complex life cycle that involves two hosts, and the parasite must spend time in both to complete its life cycle. Take, for example, the protozoan parasite Plasmodium , which causes malaria.

Plasmodium must spend time in humans and in an Anopheles mosquito to complete its life cycle. The mosquito acts as a vector, transferring Plasmodium from infected humans to uninfected individuals. Additionally, the mosquito acts as an intermediate host. When a female mosquito ingests blood containing Plasmodium , some of the red blood cells contain gametes eggs and sperm.

It is this life stage that can then go on to infect a new human when the mosquito feeds Figure 5. Coley, P. Herbivory and plant defenses in tropical forests. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 27, Dawkins, R. However, their evolutionary path has led them to be primarily herbivores living off bamboo and the occasional insect that gets in their way.

Omnivores may eat a variety of food throughout the year or focus on what is available seasonally. In summer, they eat grasses, berries and predate on elk calves. Then during fall, they eat a lot of whitebark pine nuts and roots before winter hibernation begins. Herbivores spend much of their day foraging for food to get their required daily energy intake by either grazing or browsing. Grazers spend their day eating grass while browsers eat a wider variety of leaves.

Frugivores often play important roles in seed dispersal for plants.