Logged out
Access All our Essays in an Instant
Swap your work for FREE access, or pay £4.99 for instant access
An ivestigation into animal foraging.
Member rating: No Rating | Words: | Submitted: Mon Jun 19 2006
Page Preview
On the left is an image preview of every page of this document, and below are the first 150 words with formatting removed:
An ivestigation into animal foraging. Animal foraging refers to the habits and techniques that animals employ when they search for food; it refers to all types of animal, both herbivore and carnivore, as it assumes that all animals are 'predators' (Krebs, 1978). The basic assumption of foraging theories is that animals optimise energy over time in order to find the highest quantity or quality of food. Some terms used in the literature need prior definition: a 'patch' is an area where food is available; 'prey' refers to food, either animal or vegetable; and 'handling time' means the time between finding the food and digesting it. In order to achieve the maximum amount of energy, an animal has to make several decisions about foraging, including patch choice, diet, and moving from patch to patch. These decisions may not be conscious, but recent experiments have shown that they do take place, and theoretical...
To see the full version of this document, and 145,348 others
