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Solitary predator: a polar bear feeds on a bearded seal it has killed. Social predators: meat ants cooperate to feed on a cicada far larger than themselves. Predation is a biological interaction in which one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey.
An animal generally learns its natural predators through direct experience. Thus, predator learning is very costly and increases the predation risk for each individual. In group learning scenarios, a few members can experience the danger of predation and transmit this acquired predator recognition throughout the group.
In the context of ecology, predation is considered to play a crucial and necessary role in ecosystems. [47] This has led some writers, such as Michael Pollan, to reject predation as being a moral problem at all, stating "predation is not a matter of morality or politics; it, also, is a matter of symbiosis". [48]
Predation or predator death anxiety is a form that arises when an individual harms another, physically and/or mentally. This form of death anxiety is often accompanied by unconscious guilt. [ 19 ] [ 14 ] [ 16 ] [ page needed ] In Freudian theory, unconscious guilt is genetically embedded into people from their prehistory, religious upbringing ...
A good example is warning coloration in aposematic species. Predators are more likely to remember a common color pattern that they have already encountered frequently than one that is rare. This means that new mutants or migrants that have color patterns other than the common type are eliminated from the population by differential predation.
Hyperpredation has been recorded in an ecosystem involving a bird (native prey), a cat (alien predator), and a rabbit (alien prey). Hyperpredation, also known as hypopredation, is when a generalist predator increases its predation pressure as a result of the introduction of a substitute prey. [1]
An extensively studied example is the fiddler crab. When exposed to a predator, fiddler crabs move in ways that are consistent with the selfish herd theory. [5] Dispersed groups are more likely to form an aggregate when subjected to danger and crabs attempt to run toward the center of a forming group. [12] Selfish herd behavior is seen also in:
The definition of preference will therefore impact the understanding of switching. The most common definition of preference is the relationship between the ratio of prey in the environment and the ratio of prey in a predator's diet. It has been independently proposed a number of times and is described by the equation: