Sentences with phrase «large animal predator»

Not exact matches

And much larger prey animals, such as pigs, which are also unclean animals, so there could only have been one pair, would be needed for the larger predators.

The only available food source becomes larger herd animals, a daunting challenge even for the largest of predators.

But when faced with a large land - based predator, eels will launch themselves from the water and electrify the animal with a touch of the head.

The study is one of the first to test if the «landscape of fear» model, a scientific theory that has been used to explain how animals move and interact with the environment based on their fear of being attacked by their predators, is applicable to large open marine systems involving wide - ranging species, like sharks and turtles.

The current extinction of many of Earth's large terrestrial carnivores has left some extant prey species lacking knowledge about contemporary predators, a situation roughly parallel to that 10,000 to 50,000 years ago, when naı̈ve animals first encountered colonizing human hunters.

«They nest in large, densely packed, noisy colonies and often gang up on a predator,» says Pat Monaghan, a professor of animal ecology at the University of Glasgow in the UK.

Other researchers, however, including PennVet's Serpell, doubt human hunter - gatherers would have tolerated large predators near their camps — or that the resource - frugal humans would have left behind enough potential food to sustain a wolf - sized animal.

Scientists reported last March that one voracious Cambrian predator — an anomalocaridid, or «abnormal shrimp» — not only survived, but at 7 feet long had become the largest animal on Earth.

The hypothesis on dietary differences between modern humans and Neandertals is based on the study of animal bones found in caves occupied by these two types of hominids, which can provide clues about their diet, but it is always difficult to exclude large predators living at the same time as being responsible for at least part of this accumulation.

In general, hyenas are large, strong, flesh - eating animals that hunt a wide range of prey but mostly feed on carrion (the kills of other predators).

Modern conservation efforts tend to center around large animals — such as tigers, elephants, and wolves — and top predators in peril, while Roopnarine and Angielczyk show that small amniotes (reptiles and ancient mammal relatives) were most vulnerable during the early phase of this long - ago period of extinction.

Now a study in the journal Science shows the impact of this wholesale elimination of large predators and other animals at the top of local food chains.

Reasons for the jailhouse pattern include confusing predators, being camouflaged in grasslands, and allowing the animals to pick each other out in large herds.

Not only do we kill other animals at much higher rates than other predators, but our ability to bring down larger adults can make it very difficult for some prey populations to recover.

After being absorbed by plankton, the mercury moves up the food chain: The plankton is eaten by small fish, which are then gobbled up by larger predators, each bigger animal accumulating more mercury with every meal.

«This spectacular new predator, one of the largest and best preserved soft - bodied arthropods from Marble Canyon, joins the ranks of many unusual marine creatures that lived during the Cambrian Explosion, a period of rapid evolutionary change starting about half a billion years ago when most major animal groups first emerged in the fossil record,» said co-author Jean - Bernard Caron, senior curator of invertebrate paleontology at the ROM and an associate professor in the Departments of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Earth Sciences at U of T.

Part of the problem is that the kinds of native animals that are most likely to be affected by toads are big predators, like quolls (marsupial carnivores), large snakes, and goannas.

Large herds of grazing animals evolved to roam around natural grasslands, eating the grasses and being chased by large predaLarge herds of grazing animals evolved to roam around natural grasslands, eating the grasses and being chased by large predalarge predators.

Computer generated decomposing of animal carcasses taps into Darwin's unsettling yet organic vision that all of nature is at war from the smallest to largest predator.

Since this is a G - rated film, there are no close - ups of prey animals being torn to ribbons by predators like the snow leopard, but you do see some shots of the large animals feeding on carcasses, having chased down the slower members of the unfortunate prey.

Hundreds of thousands of the skilled predators roamed the continent, feeding primarily on such large wild animals as deer, moose, and elk.

Wolves have larger paws and their legs are longer so they can run much faster than dogs, an asset for animals that need to hunt down their food and / or escape predators.

They hunt animals smaller than themselves to eat but are lunch for larger predators in the wild.

That animal is a large predator.

The primary theory for this phenomenon is that smaller animals can more easily travel to islands, and by escaping the larger mainland predators who can not easily follow them, they also escape the evolutionary pressure to remain small and agile.