Feeding behaviour

Feeding behaviour, any action of an animal that is directed toward the procurement of nutrients. The variety of means of procuring food reflects the diversity of foods used and the myriad of animal types.

The living cell depends on a virtually uninterrupted supply of materials for its metabolism. In multicellular animals the body fluids surrounding each cell are the immediate source of nutrients. The contents of these fluids are kept at a relatively constant level in spite of tolls taken by the cells, primarily by mobilization of nutrients stored in the body; in vertebrates, for example, glucose is stored in the liver, fats in the fat tissues, calcium in the bones. These stores, however, will become exhausted unless the animal takes up nutrients from outside. Movements performed for this purpose are termed feeding behaviour.

Nutritional requirements of higher animals

Cells use nutrients as fuel for energy production (catabolism) and as material for processes of maintenance and growth (anabolism). Multicellular animals derive energy solely from the breakdown of complex organic molecules, mainly carbohydrates and fats. Because the fuel for the maintenance of animal life comes only from other living organisms or their remains, animals are known as heterotrophic organisms. All animal life depends ultimately on the existence of organisms (largely green plants) that can use inorganic sources of energy, of which solar radiation is by far the most important; some microorganisms, however, obtain energy from oxidation of simple inorganic compounds.

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For anabolic purposes, food must provide adequate amounts of all chemical elements needed by the cells. Of the approximately 35 elements now known to occur in animal cells, four (oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen) make up about 95 percent of the cell weight; another nine (calcium, phosphorus, chlorine, sulfur, potassium, sodium, magnesium, iodine, and iron) contribute about 4 percent. All of these elements have indispensable functions. The remaining 20-odd, together constituting less than 1 percent of cell weight, are called trace elements, because they occur in minute quantities. Although some of them may become incorporated into cells by accident, many fulfill vital functions (see nutrition).

It is important to note that animal cells cannot synthesize from simple compounds certain necessary complex molecules. Instead, certain large organic molecules must serve as building blocks; such so-called essential dietary components include the vitamins, some amino acids, and certain fatty substances. In general, higher animals appear to have more restricted synthetic powers than lower ones and to require a correspondingly greater number of essential foodstuffs. Microorganisms in the intestines of vertebrates may synthesize materials essential for the host, so that the food of the latter need not contain these substances.

Types of food procurement

Because much of animal evolution involves adaptation for the procurement of food, the extent of the meaning of the term feeding behaviour is not clear. Migratory habits of birds, for instance, no doubt evolved in part as a result of seasonal food shortages; individual birds now, however, start migration before food becomes scarce. Migration, therefore, important though it may be in the feeding ecology of a species, is not considered in this section, which concentrates on food-directed activities that are enhanced by a need for nutrients in the body of an individual. For similar reasons, activities such as host finding and acceptance by internal parasites for themselves or their offspring also are excluded.

Even with these restrictions, the diversity of feeding patterns is bewildering. A useful classification has been put forward by British zoologists Sir Maurice Yonge and J.A.C. Nicol, based on the structural mechanisms utilized, although, as Nicol observed, “many animals make use of a variety of feeding mechanisms, conjointly, or separately as occasion demands”:

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• I. Mechanisms for dealing with small particles.

  • A. Pseudopodial (e.g., many protozoans). Pseudopods consist of fingerlike projections of the cell membrane and its contents (cytoplasm) that surround and engulf food.
  • B. Ciliary (e.g., sponges, bivalve mollusks). Cilia are minute hairlike projections of cell membranes that, by concerted beating in wave rhythm, set up water currents or physically move food particles.
  • C. Tentacular (e.g., certain sea cucumbers). Tentacles are slender, flexible organs on the head. They may function in sensory perception and in actually securing food.
  • D. Mucoid (e.g., many snails, such as Vermetus). In this case, the food particles become attached to a sticky mucous sheet secreted by special cells.
  • E. Muscular (e.g., certain coelenterates). In the jellyfish Rhizostoma, pulsations of the bell-shaped body draw water and food in through perforations in the arms, then expel the water after the food is removed.
  • F. Setous (e.g., many small crustaceans, such as copepods). Setae are bristlelike projections of the cuticle and are found on the appendages of many invertebrates.
• II. Mechanisms for dealing with large particles or masses.

  • A. For swallowing inactive food, such as bottom deposits (e.g., many polychaete worms, some fishes).
  • B. For scraping and boring (e.g., some gastropod and bivalve mollusks).
  • C. For seizing prey.

    • 1. For seizing and swallowing only (e.g., Hydra, many polychaete worms, many lower vertebrates).
    • 2. For seizing and masticating (e.g., Crustacea, mammals).
    • 3. For seizing followed by external digestion (e.g., some starfishes, spiders). (In such cases, the secretory and absorptive surfaces of the digestive system may be applied to the food by everting [i.e., turning inside out] the stomach, a method employed by starfish. Alternatively, digestive enzymes may be injected into the prey, liquefying the tissues, which may then be ingested by the predator. This mechanism is found in spiders.)
• III. Mechanisms for taking in fluid or soft tissues.

  • A. For piercing and sucking (e.g., leeches, mosquitoes).
  • B. For sucking only (e.g., many flies, butterflies).
  • C. For absorption through surface of body (e.g., various invertebrates feeding on decaying organic matter, internal parasites such as tapeworms, which lack a digestive tract).

A different classification, often used, rests on the nature of the behaviour for procuring food:

• A. Filter feeders strain food from the surrounding medium more or less indiscriminately.
• B. Selective feeders analyze the environment with their sense organs before aiming feeding responses at chosen items.

Some feeding patterns, however, cannot be easily fitted into either of these classes alone; spiders, for example, sieve prey from the air with webs but perform directed responses to the insects trapped. Class I of the Yonge–Nicol system comprises mainly filter feeders; most members of classes II, IIIA, and IIIB are selective feeders. Selective feeding requires good sensory and nervous equipment and, in most cases, considerable mobility. It is therefore found mainly among higher animals. Yet the primitive sea anemones are selective feeders in that, capable of paralyzing relatively large prey with their stinging cells, they do not discharge them until informed by chemical and tactile senses that prey is present. At the other extreme, whalebone whales are filter feeders, even though they are highly evolved mammals. Swimming at the surface with mouth open, they filter off large plankton (krill) using several hundred horny plates with hairlike fringes hanging down from the roof of the mouth; availability of a rich food source has caused the evolution of their feeding patterns to diverge widely from that of most other mammals.

In all cases, the feeding patterns adopted by species are the result of evolutionary interplay between (1) structural properties inherent in their phylogenetic line and (2) the ecological situations to which they have been exposed. These interactions are too complex to make generalizations profitable. The best approach is to study each species as a separate case in the light of its entire biology. A few examples are given below.

Filter feeders occur among sponges, coelenterates, polychaete worms, echinoderms, brachiopods, mollusks, arthropods, protochordates, fish, birds, and several other groups. As might be expected, filtering devices are diverse.

In the oyster, constantly lashing cilia drive a water current—up to 34 litres (about 36 quarts) per hour—through the openings of perforated gill plates. Particles only two microns (0.002 millimetre) in size are wrapped in mucus and transported by other cilia to special food grooves, along which they pass to the mouth by the action of yet further cilia; particles that are too large, too heavy, or capable of producing irritation are sorted out and rejected by various mechanical means.

The polychaete worm Chaetopterus uses a bag of mucus, secreted by special body appendages, to strain the water it pumps through its burrow. The mesh openings of the bag, about 40 angstroms (40 × 10^-7 millimetre) wide, can even trap single molecules of large proteins. Every 20 minutes, the food-laden bag is taken to the mouth, consumed, and replaced by a new one.

The sessile marine snail Vermetus gigas secretes mucus strings up to 30 centimetres (12 inches) long that extend away from the shell and entangle fine plankton. At intervals, the strings are drawn back toward the mouth and swallowed.

Selective feeders, found among major animal groups, including coelenterates, annelids, echinoderms, mollusks, arthropods, and vertebrates, show even greater diversity of feeding patterns than do filter feeders. One striking point is that different groups deal in different ways with the same food in accordance with special capacities. Animals feeding on bivalve mollusks provide one example. The starfish Asterias forces the valves apart by the relentless pull of its sucker tube feet and then everts its stomach through its mouth to digest the soft tissues inside the shell. The snail Sycotypus attacks an oyster by stealth: waiting until the valves open, it thrusts its shell between the valves and pushes its tubular feeding organ, or proboscis, into the soft parts. Another snail, Natica, supports the scraping action of a filelike structure called a radula with chemical dissolution by sulfuric acid, which is secreted by a gland on the proboscis, and drills a neat hole in a clam. Another snail, Fulgur, cracks a clam shell against its own shell by contracting its columellar muscle. Among birds, the oyster catcher (Haematopus ostralegus) adroitly cuts the closing muscles of a cockle with its chisel-shaped bill; herring gulls (Larus argentatus) break a shell by dropping it onto a rock. A sea otter (Enhydra lutris) cracks a clam on its chest, while floating on its back, by pounding it on a stone held between the forepaws.

A few additional examples further illustrate the wealth of adaptations in selective feeding. The sluggish praying mantis (orthopteran insects of the family Mantidae) stalk insect prey until within reach, then carefully orient themselves and accurately and rapidly extend forelegs adapted for grasping. For detecting prey in murky habitats, bats use an ultrasonic echolocation system; some fish use electric pulses in a somewhat comparable manner. Anglerfish dangle a baitlike appendage of the first dorsal spine (luminous in deep-sea species) to lure the fish on which they feed toward their enormous mouths. Certain labroid fishes, which eat parasites off the bodies of other fish, induce their hosts to submit to treatment by a dancing approach; certain blennies treacherously mimic this behaviour and then rapidly bite the fin of the unsuspecting victim. Shrikes perform special wiping movements to remove the sting from certain prey, even without previous experience of stinging insects. The peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) dives at birds at speeds above 160 kilometres (100 miles) per hour; and the cheetah, or hunting leopard (Acinonyx jubatus), pursues antelope at more than 95 kilometres (60 miles) per hour. More than a thousand cormorants may join in a single fish drive. Instead of hunting, some species rob food collected by members of other species; among these robbers are the marauding skuas and jaegers (Stercorariidae) and man-of-war birds (Fregata), which force weaker cousins to disgorge already swallowed prey, and various tropical flies that take up positions along the line of march of army ants and rob the passing workers.

The driving force for the evolution of each of these adaptations is the survival value to the species of selecting the food sources for which it can successfully compete. For the same reason, closely related species living in the same area may exploit separate parts of the environment; e.g., woodland titmice (Parus) forage in different parts of the trees, and the larvae of different species of the moth genus Eupithecia prefer different food plants. The result of such evolution may be that a species becomes specialized to one kind of food, as have many internal parasites and phytophagous (plant-eating) insects. Such food may be exotic, as that of the larva of a moth (Galleria) that feeds on beeswax. In other species, such as the herring gull, each individual exploits a broad range of foods, thereby lessening the risk of starvation, as it is unlikely that all types of food will become exhausted at the same time.