Sentences with phrase «large predators and prey»

Slimonia acuminata may have had the range of motion to strike large predators and prey, researchers report online April 18 in American Naturalist.

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.

Overall, predators with wide snouts and relatively large, robust skulls, such as crocodiles and orcas, are built to resist the stresses of grabbing and holding sizable, struggling prey, the team reports today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

«But the smaller size of coyotes appears to give them dietary flexibility to survive on a wider variety of food and prey sizes, making them less predictable predators of large prey.

Whereas adult great white sharks and other predators can rely on sharp teeth and powerful jaws to help dismantle large prey, juveniles may not pack enough bite to pull apart victims too big to swallow whole.

Because large carnivores regulate other predators and prey, exercising an influence on the ecosystem far out of proportion to their numbers, their protection and reintroduction is crucial.

While in the larvae stage, the Nematostella fall prey to larger fish but once mature, they become predators themselves, catching shrimp and small fish with their venomous tentacles.

For example, the removal of a large predator could allow a medium - sized predator to increase in numbers and eat its smaller mammal and bird prey into extinction.

These large frogs hide among the leaf litter on the rainforest floor, making it harder for predators to spot them and easier to snag unsuspecting passing prey such as spiders and lizards.

The top ocean predator of the time, its prey could have included early sharks, large nautiluslike mollusks, arthropods and other placoderms, Westneat says.

«Unfortunately, these two explanations were not lining up in explaining large predator movements in back yards, and even contradicted each other, especially when there could actually be more prey, like deer, available near people's homes,» said Blecha.

They feed on the bottom of the food chain — on single - celled plankton, which larger fish can not eat — and then they become prey for all sorts of upper - level predators like tuna, sea bass and halibut as well as seabirds and marine mammals.

«The mites are too small to be useful prey for the spiders and are not large enough to be a potential predator,» says Robert Pape at the University of Arizona.

These fish species are often termed marine forage fish because they are preyed upon by larger predators including larger fish, seabirds and marine mammals.

They prey on certain species — in the case of rats, small or fledgling birds and bird eggs — while being prey to larger predators themselves.

It's not only parasites that threaten outdoor cats, it's a long list of additional predators including coyotes, fox, wolves, larger birds of prey, stray dogs and even other cats — who may share infectious disease like feline leukemia or the feline immunodeficiency virus.

The outdoor dangers range from diseases and injuries from battles with other cats (who can also be the source of those diseases), to predators such as owls and other large birds of prey, to roaming dogs, or their wilder counterparts such as foxes, and of course, the very real danger posed by cars.

«The distinction between compensatory and additive mortality does, however, become increasingly redundant as the number of birds killed in a given area increases: where large numbers of prey are killed, predators would probably be killing a combination of individuals with poor and good long - term survival chances.

We argue that the behavioural capacity of feral cats to undertake long - distance excursions to exploit transient hunting opportunities results in significantly higher total predator pressure on prey, and helps to explain how low - density cat populations could have large impacts on small - mammal abundance at landscape scales.

Further, the most noteworthy mainland and large - island extinction since cats arrived in Australia with the first European settlers in the early 19th century, was that of the Tasmanian tiger, an occasional feral cat predator, albeit also a rival to feral cats in hunting small prey.

Early cats were hunters that lived in the wild, and their climbing ability meant that they had somewhere to retreat to away from larger predators, plus the capability of attacking smaller prey high up in the branches.

With huge metabolic demands — and large populations before humans started hunting them — great whales are the ocean's ecosystem engineers: they eat many fish and invertebrates, are themselves prey to other predators like killer whales, and distribute nutrients through the water.

The Project Nightjar game takes their scientific observations to another level - it gives them a large sample size and allows them to observe how predators» different visual systems affect how they spot prey.