Who eats who

[maradydd]

While talking with enochsmiles earlier today, the question came up of what baby pelicans sound like, so I went to YouTube to find out. (If you're curious, you can listen to one here.) I was mildly horrified to see that one of the related videos was of a pelican eating ducklings, and even more surprised to see that one of the videos listed as related to that video was of a lion at the San Francisco Zoo apparently eating a cat.

Intrigued by the notion of larger animals eating their smaller relatives, I executed the following Google searches, reproduced here for posterity:

"pelican eats duck": 12,200 results
"lion eats cat": 43,600 results
"tiger eats cat": 1 result
"wolf eats dog": 1920 results
"chimpanzee eats monkey": 5 results
"capybara eats rat": 0 results

Got any more pairs? Share 'em in the comments and share the pain.

Comments

[vatine]

"capybara eats guinea pig": 0

Mostly becaue Caviidae may be rodents, but so are beavers.

[ab3nd.livejournal.com]

Some friends and I were recently talking about advertising animals that are the animal that the food they are advertising is made out of, like the mascot of LJ's BBQ in Providence (http://www.ljsbbq.com/). I did a few searches to see how prevalent this kind of thing is.

"pig eats pig": 8,260
"cow eats cow": 23,000
"chicken eats chicken":9

And of course,

"dog eats dog": 23,500

I should whip up a quick script to generate a heat map of, say, which animals of the Chinese zodiac eat each other, but I'm a bit busy today.

[neoliminal.livejournal.com]

"human eats fly": 3,340,000
"human eats spider": 2,340,000
blah blah

I guess she'll die.

[ab3nd.livejournal.com]

"She'll die": 2,340,000
"She'll live": 1,250,000

I'll take that bet.

[aethera21.livejournal.com]

Since this is related to enoch, let's not forget "human eats moth" -0. Removing the quotes, I see 11,400,000 results, and a few in the top ten were actually about people eating moths.

[enochsmiles.livejournal.com]

Wow. I had forgotten that my taste for moths developed that long ago. I once horrified chocolatecoffee by eating a moth that her cat Guildenstern and I had been chasing around the house. She was all down with the hunting of the moth, but seemed shocked that I'd actually eat my prey! I don't think she kissed me again for at least a day, even though I brushed my teeth...

[ab3nd.livejournal.com]

I once drank a glass of Tokay that had a fruit fly in it. It was good Tokay, and so it seemed silly to waste it on account of a flavorless bug. My girlfriend refused to kiss me until I brushed my teeth.

[ben.livejournal.com]

snake eats snake

barracuda eats fish

scorpion eats (other arthropod)

[nibor.livejournal.com]

"Dingo eats baby": 45,000

Forgot the converse

[nibor.livejournal.com]

"baby eats dingo": 277

It's not a "food chain" so much as a "circle of lunch".

Re: Forgot the converse

[patrickat.livejournal.com]

"And it moves us all..."

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

'No results found for "walrus eats bucket"'

(Not that this is, you know, unexpected, but I had to ask. :) )

[rjgrady.livejournal.com]

Chimpanzees often hunt and eat baboons.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Rats eat mice pretty often and snakes eat other snakes.

But probably the most common is fish eating other fish. :) (This is mostly because our brains don't break fish down into groups in quite the same way we do for mammals)

[ndgmtlcd.livejournal.com]

In the wild rats eat baby mice mostly. They are easier prey than adult mice. Wild rats will also eat the young of other field rodents such as voles.

My hooded rats have always been large enough and strong enough to kill and eat full grown mice but I'm always careful when I let them out of their cages for exercice, so that they never come into contact with wild animals and their parasites. My pet rats are clean! Delousing them means costly vet fees and pharmaceuticals.

[akumadaimyo.livejournal.com]

What about monkeys eating people? Or vice versa?

[akumadaimyo.livejournal.com]

2,790,000 for Monkey eats person

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Ya know, some human populations eat our fellow simians. I imagine an anthropologist somewhere has video of a monkey-eating feast.