Birds eating worms, bugs and other grubs

Birds eating worms, bugs and other grubs

A bird's gotta eat right and sing as they wake up at the crack of dawn, history shows those birds have a great chance of getting the worm. A by gosh, it would appear birds love to eat worms. I imagine they are a great source of protein!

As a child I read several of Roald Dahl's wonderful books - and the above picture of the mother bird feed her young chicks worms reminds me of Dahl's The Twits - they were a nasty couple who did mean thinks like feed the other a plate of worms disguised as spaghetti! A classic trick if you were a kid....

But you didn't come to Animals Eating Animals for an anecdote about childhood reading, you came for pictures of birds eating bug and grubs and some other critters right? Here you go friend, feast on this!

Kingfisher with a tasty worm

This picture of a sea bird shows it doing a fine job as a wrestles with a worm that is desperately trying to stay in its worm hole.

A crunch caterpillar eaten by a bird

The quick and the dead

Let's just presume this an early bird getting a worm

A shared lunch

Owl feasting a a big brown worm

This last picture shows that even owls know they can eat worms. While it's probably a stereotype that owls eat rats, it's clear they don't mind getting their beaks dirty foraging for worms in the earth.

Leave a Comment birds, bugs and critters, cricket, kingfisher, owl, worm

What do bats eat?

Bat kissing a frog

Pictures of bats eating frogs and giant spiders

Bat Out of Hell is my favourite album of all time (OK, perhaps second to U2's Achtung Baby) so it was amusing when they played it at work today and I thought, why hasn't Animals Eating Animals featured bats eating things yet?

Perhaps you may have asked your self, what do bats eat?

And so here we are with images of fruit bats and other batty fellows eating things like frogs, watermelon and scarily large centipede.

Here's a bat eating a green cricket, and below is a poor spider getting a some fat fangs to his abdomen which almost seems ironic. Don't you think?

This picture below almost looks staged, but it appears to be a bat flying whilst holding a centipede in his mouth.

People often think of bats as bloofy thirsty monsters - and you can thank Bram Stoker for that, but the truth is that bats often eat noting but fruit!

And here's a picture of The Great Detective Batman eating his eggs:

Want more? How about this role reversal of a spider eating a bat that it caught in it's web? That must have been an epic food fight!

And now for something completely different, check out these hungry anaconda snakes!

Leave a Comment bat, bugs and critters, centipede, cricket, frog, spider

Is is true Praying Mantis eat each other after sex?

The Praying Mantis

The Praying Mantis has to be the coolest bug or critter on the planet I reckon. For two reasons. They are usually green and green is the coolest colour and two, the female apparently eats the male after copulations. We'll look into that in a minute but first I thought about why I'm doing a post on the Mighty Mantis!

I had a wonderful Easter lunch at a friend's where their 1 year old had a pet Praying Mantis - and whilst he was playing in the sun porch he found another. His dad put in in the jar with the original and, the excitement over we went and had lunch. 

Post chicken and potatoes we had a look at how the green-eyed monsters were playing. NOT TOO FRIENDLY! The original mantis was half way through eating his new jar mate, and in doing so proving to me that Pray Mantis do eat each other!

A colloquial name for the order is "praying mantises", because of the typical "prayer-like" stance, although the term is often misspelled as "preying mantis" since mantises are predatory

Although the praying mantis is known for its cannibalistic mating process in actuality it only occurs 5-31% of the time. Which kind makes me think those are some crap odds!


Apparently in laboratory set conditions of bright lights and confinement, the female mantis is more likely to eat the male as means of survival. A scientist once reported:


"In nature, mating usually takes place under cover, so rather than leaning over the tank studying their every move, we left them alone and videotaped what happened. We were amazed at what we saw. Out of thirty matings, we didn't record one instance of cannibalism, and instead we saw an elaborate courtship display, with both sexes performing a ritual dance, stroking each other with their antennae before finally mating.


OK so that's a little better then.


There is one species, however, the Mantis religiosa, in which it is necessary that the head be removed for the mating to take effect properly. Sexual cannibalism occurs most often if the female is hungry. But eating the head does causes the body to ejaculate faster....

The mantis has an huge appetite and some have been known to eat up to sixteen crickets a day, but this is not limited to just insects. They are well known to be carnivorous and cannibalistic, and only eat live prey in both nymph and adult stages. Praying Mantis are well known to love eating flies but hey have also been documented  as eating 21 species of insects, soft-shelled turtles, mice, frogs, birds, and delicious newts. 

Although the European mantis was introduced to the mighty United States to eat the horrible insects that destroy precious farm crops, other species are known informally as "soothsayers," "devil's horses," "mule killers," and "camel crickets" since their saliva was mistakenly thought to poison farm livestock. That was probably the Armish. I'm suggesting it was them because according to the stereotype I've gleaned from film and tv, they don't apparently have the internet so I'm in the clear. 

Not many people know that the the mantis can lash out at remarkable speed as it catches prey.  Prey items are caught and held securely with grasping, spiked forelegs. Check out this butterfly photo below:

Butterdead

Wasp being eaten by the Mantis

A fly being eaten

Fried Fly Wing for dinner

Said the grasshopper to the mantis?

Here's the classic picture of a praying mantis some how managing to hold onto a fucking bird. Maybe it was the most hungry mantis in the history of the entire species? I can respect that, it reminds me of this snake pulling up a kangaroo up a cliff. 

Bird attacked by a Praying Mantis

Leave a Comment bees, birds, bugs and critters, butterfly, fly, praying mantis, wasp

African Bullfrog eats a mouse. Fievel never makes another movie

Why Fievel never made another movie again...

You wouldn't normally expect to see a picture of a frog eating a mouse but it appears there's a carnivorous amphibians who seems to like munch down on the little furry critters. 

The African Bullfrog pictured above seems to have a preference for small rodents! The Telegraph reported "The enormous amphibians, unlike the docile frogs found in English garden ponds, are known for their aggressive nature and will attack virtually any animal that comes within reach."

Above: An African bull frog eats a whole bird, feathers and all. Spiders eat birds too you know...

It appears that African bullfrogs lie in wait for their prey before suddenly lunging when they sense movement nearby. This is a common trick for predators, check out this crocodile trying to eat a baby elephant after employing the same method.

Of course it's not all fun and pond games for bullfrogs, occasionally they end up as lunch them selves - check out this picture of a frog being eating by a water moccasin snake:

African Bull frogs are big beasts, they can weigh up to 2kg (4.4lbs) and are native to central and southern Africa but are often found as pets around the rest of the world.

Pyxicephalus adspersus is the latin name for the African Bullfrog.

Leave a Comment bugs and critters, frog, mouse, snakes, spider

What did the Chameleon say to the cricket?

The Telegraph newspaper has highlighted how photographer Scott Linstead goes to extraordinary lengths to capture these pictures in which creatures appear frozen in time. Check out this chameleon catching a cricket with its long sticky tongue as an example:

Stay for lunch?

Scott spends up to a week arranging the lighting and phototraps which trigger the camera and flash. The human eye and reaction speed on the shutter release button are rarely quick enough to take the photos manually. Case in point, this set up of an archer fish spitting water at a cricket to make it fall into the water so the fish can prey on it:

Interestingly, when the photographer lowered the cricket's position lower to the water, the archer fish jumped at its prey instead!

Fish out of water....

One photo that was not done as a set up was this one: Scott spent four days in a hide at the edge of a pond in Kangasala, Finland, to get this photo of an osprey eagle diving for a salmon fish:

Going my way?

Check out more of  Scott's great camera work at www.scottyphotography.com

Leave a Comment bugs and critters, eagle, fish, lizards

Bugs eating critters and critters eating bugs

What's the difference between bugs and critters? Who cares? Here's some pictures of bugs, insects and other grubby critters eating each other. Sadly, this page reminds me of a Bruce Springsteen song. Name it and I'll send you a hundred dollars. Cash.


First up, I'm gonna have to get all technical on you and use flash words like Libellula vibrans. Libellula vibrans? Sound's dirty eh? OK prudes, here's a Great Bluelab Skimmer eating a Halictid Bee...

I dunno about the authenticity of this photo, it looks kinda like a picture of Paris Hilton out on a date?

Here's a close up of a Lady Bug eating gosh knows what. 


Did you know when humans eat bugs its called entomophagy? Less educated people call it gross:

These girls are eating huhu grubs, which in New Zealand are considered a bit of a treat! maybe they think it will help with their complexion? If that doesn't do it for you, why not have a full plate of bugs and critters to chew down on? When I was in Thailand, I had this for breakfast everyday:

Snake eating a snail?

Good for you Freaking News, here's a free plug! Actually, I again doubt the authenticity of this photo, it looks like a fourth date kind of picture with Paris Hilton.


Here's a slug eating a snail, or is it the other way around? I can't tell!

Some times people like to eat monkeys. They count as critters right?

Of course, generally you only eat Monkey brains in the company of possessed Princes.


In an exclusive to Animals eating Animals I got this scoop of what the monkeys looked liked before there were served up to Indianna's date:

Orangutan's in a wheelbarrow? Too cute! Hey I have an excellent idea, Clint Eastward should to a movie where his co star is an grumpy orangutan! Shit, that would be awesome in 3D.


Back to the critters and crickets:

The Springsteen song was The Wrestler by the way. So, now you owe me a hundred bucks cash, hmmkay? Here's one C. flavopictus scorpion eating a grasshopper. But master, when do I stop?

When your eyes are like mine:

Want to see more cool shit? How about a Spider eating a bird, frogs eating strange bugs, or maybe you might want to check out the time a python attacked an electric fence!

Leave a Comment bugs and critters, humans, monkey, snakes

Assassin Bug will....assassinate you and your spider.

Said the assassin bug to the spider....

Running with Ponies reports:

"A study from Sydney’s Macquarie University has examined the predatory behaviour of the assassin bug (Stenolemus bituberus), describing for the first time the two distinct attack methods used by this araneophagic (spider-eating) insect. Putting the bugs in contact with five species of web-building spiders, Anne Wignall observed the assassin bugs to use either “stalking” or “luring” tactics to hunt their prey in their webs.

When stalking, the assassin bugs will rely on stealth to reach their prey undetected, severing and stretching the silk threads of the web between itself and the spider, and approaching it with an irregular, bouncing locomotion. Exploiting periods of environmental disturbance (caused by wind, for example), together with the vibrations created by its cryptic stepping movements, the assassin bug creates a kind of “smokescreen” effect to mask its approach.

When luring, however, the assassin bug will manipulate the silk vibrations to deliberately reveal its location on the web and draw the spider to it, plucking the threads to emulate the twitching, panicked movements of ensnared prey for up to twenty minutes. “The spider thinks it’s getting a meal, but instead gets eaten itself,” says Wignall."

That's nice and special and all, I'm just happy that the underdog wins! I mean I know it's called an Assassin bug, but any time a bug takes on a Spider for the sake of eating it, I'm rooting for the bug. 

Check out this Battle at Kruger where the underdog (spoiler) wins against all odds.

Leave a Comment bugs and critters, spider

What do frogs eat?

Frogs. Kermit. Ribbit. Princes under evil witches spells. Tadpoles. Croaking. Frogs remind me of grog. Which is awesome as grog is awesome.

Fuck, frogs are cool. Here's some frogs eating various things found in the swamp...such as other frogs like this bloke above.... or this whole bird below!

More bird anyone?

What else do bull frogs get up to when they are a bit peckish? Grass snake?

How about jumping across the great divide for a slater?

Of course, frogs are not really king of the pond, and sometimes the birds get their revenge:

Kermit the frog also once ate Lady Gaga. It wasn't pretty...

Hello, Hello, do you like frogs? Gnomes?

Check out this myth about boiling frogs....

Leave a Comment birds, bugs and critters, frog, snakes