When carnivores are "full and lazy".
Are animals usually hungry and busily looking for food, or do they often meet their energetic and other needs in the 24 h of a day? Focusing on carnivores, I provide evidence for the latter scenario. I develop a model that predicts the minimum food abundance at which a carnivore reaches satiation and is released from time constraints. Literature data from five invertebrate and vertebrate species suggest that food abundances experienced in the field often exceed this threshold. A comparison of energetic demands to kill rates also suggests that carnivores often reach satiation: for the 16 bird and mammal species analyzed, this frequency is 88% (average across species). Because pressure of time would likely lead to trade-offs in time allocation and thus to a nonsatiating food consumption, these results suggest that carnivores are often released from time constraints.
Jeschke
Jonathan M
JM
Section of Evolutionary Ecology, Department Biology II, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany. jonathan.jeschke@gmx.net
D000818:Animals; D001717:Birds / Q000502:physiology*; D002335:Carnivora / Q000502:physiology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D011235:Predatory Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors