Predation

"Predators" redirects here. For NHL team, see Nashville Predators.

Lion and cub eating a Cape Buffalo

Indian Python swallowing a full grown Chital deer at Mudumalai National Park

In ecology, predation describes a relationship and actions between two creatures. A predator attacks and eats its prey. Predators may or may not kill their prey before eating them. But the act of predation always causes the death of its prey and taking in the prey's body parts into the predators body. A true predator can be thought of as one which both kills and eats another animal.

A predator is an animal that hunts, catches and eats other animals. For example, a spider eating a fly caught at its web is a predator, or a pack of lions eating a buffalo. The animals that the predator hunts are called prey.

Predators are usually carnivores (meat-eaters) or omnivores (eats plants and other animals). Predators will hunt other animals for food. Examples for predators are lions, tigers, Leopards, crocodiles, snakes, eagles, wolves, killer whales, and sharks.

Predators are usually defined as animals that eat other animals. But to some scientists, the word predator means an animal or any living organism that eats anything. A cow eating grass will be a predator of that grass. Plants are not predators because they make their own food.

However, there are different characteristics in both predator or prey.

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  A young Red-tailed Hawk eating a California Vole

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  Meat ants eating a cicada; some species can prey on much bigger than they are, particularly when working cooperatively

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  A lioness with her prey.