There are also a variety of "foodies" in the animal kingdom, and their love for food is even less than that of humans. Unlike humans, animals tend to overeat to satisfy their appetites. So, which animals are the most edible in the world?
Here are the 10 most edible animals: blue whales, shrews, hummingbirds, giant pandas, sea otters, silkworms, Tasmanian devils, etc., which are considered to be among the most edible animals in the world due to their unique habits and food needs. Their eating habits are not only for survival, but also to reflect the diversity and ecological balance of the animal world.
1. Blue Whale (the first stomach king on the earth)
A decomposing blue whale carcass on the banks of the Trout River in the Netherlands
At the top of the list of animals known for their appetite certainly belongs to the blue whale, the largest known creature on Earth, with a body length of up to 33 meters and a weight of more than 200 tons, equivalent to the weight of 25 adult elephants. Despite their size, blue whales feed mainly on tiny krill. When a blue whale has an appetite, it can devour more than 2 million krill in a single feed. In addition, the blue whale has an incredible digestive system that can completely digest about 8 tons of food in a very short period of time. These giant creatures eat between 4 and 8 tonnes a day, and once they have less than 2 tonnes of food in their bellies, they become hungry.
2. Shrew (starve to death)
Shrews are also the big stomachs of the animal kingdom, even though they are one of the smallest land mammals. The smallest shrew is only 3.5 centimeters long and weighs 2 grams, which is about the size of a coin. In comparison, an adult male elephant in South Africa weighs about 6 tons. Shrews spend 17 hours a day foraging for food, eating 60 kilograms of dry food. Although it may seem like a staggering amount of food, food is actually only a small percentage of their body weight. However, shrews have to swallow at least as much food as their own body weight every day. If they have plenty of food, they can even eat up to 3 times their body weight a day. Shrews need to consume a lot of calories to offset their huge energy expenditure, and if they don't eat for 5 hours, these critters will die of starvation.
3. Hummingbird (gluttony to maintain physical strength)
The hummingbird is a small, brightly colored bird that is considered by many to be the goddess of the forest. However, these "goddesses of the forest" are also big eaters, and hummingbirds are one of the more edible animals compared to their size. In an 8-hour period, hummingbirds can eat about 48 times, preying every 10 minutes. Hummingbirds have such a large appetite mainly because they have a very large energy expenditure. The hummingbird's wings vibrate an average of 50 times per second, and its metabolic rate is the fastest among vertebrates, with a heartbeat of up to 500 beats per minute. Among them, the red-throated northern hummingbird has the fastest record for flapping its wings and is probably one of the most voracious birds in the world. The red-throated northern hummingbird can flap its wings 200 times a second and consume much more honey than it weighs on itself, even twice as much.
4. Giant panda (eat nearly 40% of body weight every day)
Our national treasure, the giant panda, is also one of the most devastated animals. The ancestors of the giant panda were carnivores, but over the course of a long evolutionary process, the giant panda's diet has gradually been dominated by bamboo because it is easier to obtain. However, their digestive system has not changed much and is still similar to that of carnivores: they have a shorter digestive tract, sharp canine teeth, and no cecum. This raises the question: the panda's gut lacks specific bacteria that break down cellulose, so the percentage of calories obtained from bamboo is low. In order to obtain nutrients, pandas can only make up by eating non-stop. In the wild, pandas feed for up to 14 hours a day, except for sleep or short distances. A giant panda eats between 12 and 38 kilograms of food per day, close to 40% of its body weight.
5. Sea otter (consumes more than 1/3 of its body weight of seafood a day)
Sea otters are also one of the top 10 most edible animals. They often float on the surface of the water, making it easy to forget that they are actually animals that are 1 and a half meters long and weigh about 40 kilograms. Sea otters not only love to eat, but they can eat. Through generations of evolution and reproduction, they have also refined their skills in using tools, and have long learned the "basic operation" of cracking open shells with stones, and they are also good at using their bodies as a dining table for easy eating. Sea otters typically consume as much as 1/3 of their body weight in a day. Most of their diet is shellfish, abalone, sea urchins, crabs, etc., which grow on the bottom of the sea, and sometimes some seaweed and fish.
6. Silkworm (can eat 1/2~2/3 of its own body weight every day)
In the ranking of animal big stomachs, silkworms are also famous eating machines. For example, a silkworm can eat mulberry leaves several times its own weight every day. They also eat more at different stages of growth. Mulberry silkworms can eat more than 1,000 times its weight in two months, and generally eat 0.4~0.6 kg of mulberry leaves in their lifetime. Throughout his life, the silkworm has been eating almost non-stop, and his mouth has never been idle.
The most abundant species is the polyphonic silkworm, a caterpillar of the polyphonic silkworm can eat food 86,000 times its own weight in 56 days, and is known as the most greedy animal in the world.
7. Tasmanian devil (can eat 15% of its body weight every day)
Tasmanian devils are also a common player in the animal food rankings. They are predominantly carnivorous, and as a small Australian beast of prey, the Tasmanian devil has sharp teeth and a strong bite, and can even prey on animals slightly larger than it. Their preferred food includes wombats, but they also eat other domestic animals (such as sheep), birds, fish, frogs, and reptiles depending on the abundance of food around them.
Tasmanian devils eat an average of 15% of their body weight each day, but they can also eat up to 40% of their body weight in half an hour, if circumstances permit.
8. Vulture (eats fast and eats a lot)
The vulture is recognized as the king of carrion, feeding mainly on large animal carcasses and other decaying animals, occasionally attacking and preying on small animals. Known as the "cleaners of the steppes", they often hover over the open and more bare mountains and plains, searching for dead animals. The vulture's digestive system contains a special acidic substance that is able to break down any food, even bacteria and bones.
As a result of long-term exposure to pathogens, vultures have evolved a strong immune system with well-developed antibodies that are effective enough to fight off the invasion of germs, as well as to defend against a wide range of biotoxins. Vultures are staggeringly festive, with a flock of vultures able to devour the remains of a large animal within 1 hour, and some individuals can eat more than 20% of their body weight.
9. Honeypot ants (eat until the body is about to burst)
The honeypot ant is a type of ant that lives in North America. They are called "honeypot ants" because of their particularly well-developed abdomen, which looks like a large honey jar in tow. When not sucking honey, the belly of a honeypot ant is almost indistinguishable from that of a normal ant. But in order to store more honey, after a long period of evolution, the belly of the honeypot ant has hard bone fragments, which are connected by a soft and tough membrane, which is very elastic.
When food is plentiful, honeypot ants will greedily suck honey until their bellies become transparent and look like they are bursting. After sucking honey, the belly of the honeypot ant can reach 1.5 grams, and the whole abdomen is the size of a grape. This special abdominal structure makes the honeypot ant a "living honey pot", which can provide energy and nutrients to the entire colony during the shortage season.
10. Python (swallowing animals of equal weight or more than body weight)
Snakes are also known as the "big stomach" in the animal kingdom. When they are foraging, they will lie in ambush in a hidden place in advance, bend their bodies, swing their heads from side to side, and spit out their tongues, searching for the breath of the prey around them, waiting for the prey to come to the door. Pythons, in particular, are commonly 3 to 5 meters long and have a long enough body to wrap around their prey until they lose their heartbeat and stop breathing.
Snakes eat an astonishing amount of food and can swallow animals equal to or even more than their own body weight at a time. However, sometimes they can also break their bellies due to the sheer size of their food. Despite this, the snake's digestive system is very efficient and is able to fully digest food after a week.
The world's top 10 most edible animals, the big stomach king of the animal kingdom - Animal Encyclopedia