Eating behaviors

Question

This piglix contains articles or sub-piglix about Eating behaviors

Answer 1

Eating

Eating (also known as consuming) is the ingestion of food, typically to provide a heterotrophic organism with energy and to allow for . Animals and other heterotrophs must eat in order to survive — carnivores eat other animals, herbivores eat plants, omnivores consume a mixture of both plant and animal matter, and detritivores eat detritus. Fungi digest organic matter outside of their bodies as opposed to animals that digest their food inside their bodies. For humans, eating is an activity of daily living. Some individuals may limit their amount of nutritional intake. This may be a result of a lifestyle choice, due to hunger or famine, as part of a diet or as religious fasting.

Many homes have a large eating room or outside (in the tropics) kitchen area devoted to preparation of meals and food, and may have a dining room, dining hall, or another designated area for eating. Some trains have a dining car. Dishware, silverware, drinkware, and cookware come in a wide array of forms and sizes. Most societies also have restaurants, food courts, and food vendors so that people may eat when away from home, when lacking time to prepare food, or as a social occasion (dining club). At their highest level of sophistication, these places become "theatrical spectacles of global cosmopolitanism and myth." At picnics, potlucks, and food festivals, eating is in fact the primary purpose of a social gathering. At many social events, food and beverages are made available to attendees.

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Answer 2

List of feeding behaviours

Feeding is the process by which organisms, typically animals, obtain food. Terminology often uses either the suffixes -vore, -vory, -vorous from Latin vorare, meaning "to devour", or -phage, -phagy, -phagous from Greek φαγειν, meaning "to eat".

The evolution of different feeding strategies is varied with some feeding strategies evolving several times in independent lineages. In terrestrial vertebrates, the earliest forms were large amphibious piscivores 400 million years ago. While amphibians continued to feed on fish and later insects, reptiles began exploring two new food types, other tetrapods (carnivory), and later, plants (herbivory). Carnivory was a natural transition from insectivory for medium and large tetrapods, requiring minimal adaptation (in contrast, a complex set of adaptations was necessary for feeding on highly fibrous plant materials).

The specialization of organisms towards specific food sources is one of the major causes of evolution of form and function, such as:

There are many modes of feeding that animals exhibit, including:

is the ability of an animal to eat a variety of food, whereas monophagy is the intolerance of every food except of one specific type (see generalist and specialist species).

Another classification refers to the specific food animals specialize in eating, such as:

The eating of non-living or decaying matter:

There are also several unusual feeding behaviours, either normal, opportunistic, or pathological, such as:

An opportunistic feeder sustains itself from a number of different food sources, because the species is behaviourally sufficiently flexible.

Some animals exhibit hoarding and caching behaviours in which they store or hide food for later use.

Alcohol – it is widely believed that some animals eat rotting fruit for this to ferment and make them drunk, however, this has been refuted in the case of at least elephants.

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Answer 3

Predation

This piglix contains articles or sub-piglix about Predation

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Answer 4

Bubble net feeding

Bubble-net feeding is a unique and complex feeding behavior engaged in by Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) and Bryde's whales in Gulf of Tosa (), Japan. It is one of the few surface feeding behaviors that humpback whales are known to engage in. This type of feeding is often done in groups. The group size can range from a minimum of two or three whales participating and up to sixty at one time. Whales can also perform a similar method of surface feeding called lunge feeding but is done solo.

Humpback whales are migratory and only eat during half the year. They will typically spend the summer months (May through September) in feeding grounds with cooler waters that they return to every year. They have been documented feeding in areas such as Southeast Alaska and off the coast of Antarctica. During the other half of the year humpbacks will spend time in their breeding grounds where they do not eat at all. During their feeding season humpback whales will actively feed for up to twenty-two hours a day. They do this in order to have enough fat reserves stored in their bodies to live off of during their breeding season.

Bubble-net feeding is a cooperative feeding method used by groups of humpback whales. This behavior is not instinctual, it is learned. Not every population of humpbacks know how to bubble net feed according to some studies. After observing different populations it is apparent which whales know how to create a bubble net and which do not. They have to learn the method in order to be successful. Humpback whales use vocalizations to communicate to one another in order to effectively and efficiently execute the bubble net in order for them all to feed. As the group circles a school of small fish such as salmon, krill, or herring they use a team effort to disorient and corral the fish into a net of bubbles. One whale will typically begin to exhale out of their blowhole beneath the surface at the school of fish to begin the process. More whales will also start to blow bubbles while continuing to circle their prey. They corral the fish into a tight circle while creating a net of bubbles to surround the fish and keep them from escaping. The size of the net created can range from three to thirty meters in diameter. One whale will sound a feeding call, at which point all whales simultaneously swim upwards with mouths open to feed on the trapped fish. As the whales swim up to the surface to feed they can hold up to 15,000 gallons of sea water as they use their baleen plates to strain the water to get the maximum amount of fish they need. Humpback whales have 14 to 35 throat grooves that run from the top of the chin all the way down to the navel. These grooves allow the mouth to expand. When they swallow they blow the sea water out from their blowhole as they ingest the fish. The fish that they ingest are also a source of hydration for them. Bubble netting is an advanced and necessary feeding method developed by humpback whales to feed multiple mouths at one time.

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Answer 5

Calabash Chalk

Calabash chalk is a geophagic material popularly consumed in Nigeria and other West African countries for pleasure, and by pregnant women as a cure for nausea. Geophagia is the practice of eating the earth, including soil and chalk. This practice is neither new nor outdated and can be associated with religious beliefs, medication or as part of a regular diet. This act can expose the consumer to toxic substances and parasites found in the ingested earth.

Calabash Chalk is identified by different names such as: Calabar Stone (English), La Craie or Argile (French), Mabele (Lingala in Congo), Nzu (Igbo of Nigeria), Ndom (Efik/Ibibio Nigeria). In addition it is also known as Ebumba, Poto and Ulo In Ghana it is known as Shilè

Calabash Chalk is found predominantly in Nigeria and other West African communities. Although this geophagic material is native to Africa, as a result of migration of West African’s to other nations, it can also be found in ethnic stores in the UK, Canada and the USA. Calabash Chalk is also eaten amongst women of African descent in Georgia, U.S.A.

Calabash chalk is a naturally occurring material composed of fossilized sea shells. However it can also be prepared artificially by combining clay, sand, wood ash and even salt. By molding and heating this mixture, the Calabash chalk is obtained. It is available as a powder, a molded shape or a block.

There are different views concerning the components of Calabash Chalk, the consensus being that the major component is aluminum silicate hydroxide. This comes from the kaolin clay group, making Al2Si2O5(OH)4 a possible formula for Calabash chalk.Aside from aluminum silicate hydroxide, Calabash chalk is also known to have very high concentrations of lead. The European Union recommends (Commission Regulation, 2001) the amount of lead in food should not exceed 1 mg/kg, however the amount of lead contained in Calabash chalk has been reported (Codex Committee of Food Additives and Contaminants, 2003) to be between 10–50 mg/kg. In addition, other reports of its composition include: aluminum, persistent organic pollutants, silicon, alpha lindane, endrin, endosulfan 11, arsenic, and chromium.

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Answer 6

Calorie restriction

Calorie restriction, or caloric restriction, or energy restriction, is a dietary regimen that reduces calorie intake without incurring malnutrition or a reduction in essential nutrients. "Low" can be defined relative to the subject's previous intake before intentionally restricting calories, or relative to an average person of similar body type. In a number of species, including yeast, fish, rodents and dogs, calorie restriction without malnutrition has been shown to slow the biological aging process, resulting in longer maintenance of youthful health and an increase in both median and maximum lifespan. However, the life-extending effect of calorie restriction is not shown to be universal.

In humans, the long-term health effects of moderate caloric restriction with sufficient nutrients are unknown.

Using rhesus monkeys – which harbor 93% of the human genome – a collaboration of the United States National Institute on Aging and the University of Wisconsin found that caloric restriction without malnutrition extended lifespan and delayed the onset of age-related disorders; older age, higher diet quality, and female gender were positive factors affecting the benefits realized from lower caloric intake.

In humans the long-term health effects of moderate caloric restriction with sufficient nutrients are unknown.

As noted above, the term "calorie restriction" as used in biogerontology refers to dietary regimens that reduce calorie intake without incurring malnutrition. If a restricted diet is not designed to include essential nutrients, malnutrition may result in serious deleterious effects, as shown in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. This study was conducted during World War II on a group of lean men, who restricted their calorie intake by 45% for 6 months, and composed roughly 90% of their diet with carbohydrates. As expected, this malnutrition resulted in many positive metabolic adaptations (e.g. decreased body fat, blood pressure, improved lipid profile, low serum T3 concentration, and decreased resting heart rate and whole-body resting energy expenditure), but also caused a wide range of negative effects, such as anemia, lower extremity edema, muscle wasting, weakness, neurological deficits, dizziness, irritability, lethargy, and depression.

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Answer 7

Chesson's index

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Answer 8

Conditioned taste aversion

Conditioned taste aversion occurs when an animal associates the taste of a certain food with symptoms caused by a toxic, spoiled, or poisonous substance. Generally, taste aversion is developed after ingestion of food that causes nausea, sickness, or vomiting. The ability to develop a taste aversion is considered an adaptive trait or survival mechanism that trains the body to avoid poisonous substances (e.g., poisonous berries) before they can cause harm. The association reduces the probability of consuming the same substance (or something that tastes similar) in the future, thus avoiding further poisoning. It is an example of classical conditioning or Pavlovian conditioning.

Studies on conditioned taste aversion which involved irradiating rats were conducted in the 1950s by Dr. John Garcia, leading to it sometimes being called the Garcia effect.

Conditioned taste aversion sometimes occurs when sickness was merely coincidental and not related to the substance that caused the sickness. For example, a person who becomes very sick after consuming vodka-and-orange-juice cocktails may then become averse to the taste of orange juice, even though the sickness was caused by the over-consumption of alcohol. Under these circumstances, conditioned taste aversion is sometimes known as the "Sauce-Bearnaise Syndrome", a term coined by Seligman and Hager.

While studying the effects of radiation on various behaviors in the mid to late 1950s, Dr. John Garcia noticed that rats developed an aversion to substances consumed prior to being irradiated. To examine this, Garcia put together a study in which three groups of rats were given sweetened water followed by either no radiation, mild radiation, or strong radiation. When rats were subsequently given a choice between sweetened water and regular tap water, rats who had been exposed to radiation drank much less sweetened water than those who had not. Specifically, the total consumption of sweetened water for the no-radiation, mild radiation and strong radiation rats was 80%, 40% and 10%, respectively.

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Answer 9

Consumer-resource systems

Consumer-resource interactions are the core motif of ecological food chains or food webs, and are an umbrella term for a variety of more specialized types of biological species interactions including prey-predator (see predation), host-parasite (see parasitism), plant-herbivore and victim-exploiter systems. These kinds of interactions have been studied and modeled by population ecologists for close on a century, as reviewed in synthetic monographs on this topic by Murdoch et al. and Turchin. Species at the bottom of the food chain, such as algae and other autotrophs, consume non-biological resources, such as minerals and nutrients of various kinds, and they derive their energy from light (photons) or chemical sources. Species higher up in the food chain survive by consuming other species and can be classified by what they eat and how they obtain or find their food.

Various terms have arisen to define consumers by what they eat, such as meat-eating carnivores, fish-eating piscivores, insect-eating insectivores, plant-eating herbivores, seed-eating granivores, and fruit-eating frugivores and omnivores are meat eaters and plant eaters. An extensive classification of consumer categories based on a list of feeding behaviors exists. Another way of categorizing consumers is based on a biomass transformation web (BTW) formulation that organizes resources into five components: live and dead animal, live and dead plant, and particulate (i.e. broken down plant and animal) matter. It also distinguishes between consumers that gather their resources by moving across landscapes from those that mine their resources by becoming sessile once they have located a stock of resources large enough for them to feed on during completion of a full life history stage. To avoid confusing nomenclatures and distinguish between such adjectives as herbivorous and phytophagous, which often interchangeably applied to plant eating insects, BTW uses Latin etymology (vorare=to eat) and Greek etymology (phagous=eating or devouring) to distinguish between species that respectively gather and mine resources.

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Answer 10

Coprophagia

Coprophagia /kɒp.rə.ˈfeɪ.dʒi.ə/ or coprophagy /kəˈprɒfədʒiː/ is the consumption of feces. The word is derived from the Greek κόπρος copros, "feces" and φαγεῖν phagein, "to eat". Coprophagy refers to many kinds of feces-eating, including eating feces of other species (heterospecifics), of other individuals (allocoprophagy), or one's own (autocoprophagy) – those once deposited or taken directly from the anus.

In humans, coprophagia has been observed in individuals with mental illness. Some animal species eat feces as a normal behavior; other species may not normally consume feces but do so under very unusual conditions.

Coprophagia has been observed in individuals with schizophrenia and pica. Individuals with Prader–Willi syndrome also often exhibit coprophagia.

Consuming feces carries the risk of spreading bacteria such as E. coli and of contracting diseases such as Hepatitis A, Hepatitis E, pneumonia, polio and influenza. Coprophagia also carries a risk of contracting intestinal parasites.

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