What an animal eats is heavily dependent on its ecology and adaptations to its habitat. A diverse array of behavioural, morphological and physiological adaptations have evolved to ensure animals have efficient feeding strategies. Animals are broadly divided into herbivores, carnivores and omnivores (heterotrophs).

Herbivorous animals predominantly graze on grasses, herbs and small bushes. Different plants have different nutrients and some animal specialise on exploiting them, such as giant pandas who only eat bamboo. Some herbivores specialise on woody shrubs and trees, this is called browsing, giraffes are great example.
Carnivorous animals only eat meat. One of the best examples here are animals in the cat family like lions, tigers and even domestic cats. While dogs are predominantly carnivorous, they also eat other things and are not strictly carnivores. Being carnivorous presents a number of issues when it comes to catching food, if prey move, predators have to move faster, if prey can hide, predators need to know how to flush them out, if prey can defend themselves, predators need to be stealthy and problem solve how to get around this.
Omnivorous animals are generalist and eat a combination of plant, animal and fungal matter. Rats are omnivorous and will happily feed on grass, seeds, insects, eggs and even human garbage.

What an animal eats will also dictate the social living conditions. Many animals need to work in groups to catch their prey. For examples, lions are much more successful when they hunt as a pride. Their food is highly mobile and often a lot bigger than an individual lion. If food is widely dispersed and spread out animals will usually be solitary, Eurasian otters for example are solitary all year around and only meet to breed.

Watch this great short video on lions taking down an elephant in Africa. This shows just how well working together can get the job done.

Antipredation

Being able to defend yourself from predators is essential if you are a prey animal. One mistake will be fatal. Predation is such a strong force of natural selection many adaptation have evolved involving morphological, behavioural and even some biochemical defences, all to allow prey to avoid predators. There are two main ways animals avoid predation; avoiding detection and escape adaptations.

Avoiding detection

If prey can avoid predators to begin with they can save energy by avoiding dangerous and expensive escape manoeuvres. There are three ways of doing this: blending in, being quiet or choosing a safe place.

The morphology of many animals allows them to blend in to their environment to avoid detection. This is called crypsis. Cryptic colouration is not enough though, animals also need to behave/orientate themselves to avoid detection. Some animals can behaviourally change their colour to blend in and become cryptic, cephalopods like octopus are masters at this. They can change quickly and decrease their chances of detection. They can even change their shape! The mimic octopus has the amazing ability to change its shape to simulate larger and more dangerous animals. Other animals, like the oak-leaf butterfly masquerade as inanimate inedible objects.

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Watch this amazing video on the mimic octopus. Absolutely fascinating!

Escaping predators

It is generally inevitable in a preys lifetime it will come across a predator. They must therefore have some mechanisms to allow them to escape. There are five main ways to escape predators. These encompass fleeing, predator inspection, feigning death, predator signalling and attack.

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