Spot the Frippet: carnivore.

Let's start with the basics.

A carnivore eats meat...

...well, except for the ones which don't (which is most of them).

A member of the order of mammals called Carnivora is an example of a proper meat-eating carnivore...

...except that this order of mammals includes the giant panda, which lives on bamboo.

So what's going on? 

A carnivore is more widely defined as an animal which eats other animals. So that includes hedgehogs, for example, which eat slugs and snails and beetles:


photo by Hrald



and pike, which eat mostly other fish:


illustration by Sherman Foote Denton

and robins, which eat insects:


Eurasian robin photo by Charles J Sharp

as does the carnivorous Venus fly-trap:


photo by AleksanderSandi

There are even carnivorous fungi (but don't worry, they don't eat anything bigger than springtails).

So could you call man - some men - carnivores?

Almost certainly not. There are, obviously, degrees of meat-eating, from the obligate carnivore like a lion, which eats pretty-much nothing but meat, to the facultative carnivore, like a dog, which can eat vegetable food, there isn't a rule which says at which point the facultative carnivore becomes an omnivore. There are, however, categories which cast a glance towards the answer. A hypercarnivore eats more than 70% animal; a mesocarnivore 30-70% animal; and a hypocarnivore less than 30% animal.

Being a carnivore seems quite cool, until you consider that an obligate carnivore has to rely on other animals to get his food into a state in which it can eat it. Then it seems a bit weedy.

If you could, would you be an obligate carnivore?

You'd probably have a good svelte figure (unless you were a polar bear) but it would mean giving up cake, pancakes and chocolate.

Personally, I want to eat everything.

Spot the Frippet: a carnivore. This word comes from two Latin words: caro, meat and vorare, to devour.