Sentence Examples:
Successful adaptation of herbivores (vegetation-eating animals) led, in turn, to increased varieties and numbers of predatory carnivores (meat-eating animals).
Since carnivores are the hunters rather than the hunted, they enjoy far greater mobility than, for instance, the rodents.
That true carnivores are not generally cannibals may be put down to their more ancient and perfect adaptation to a predatory life.
Among carnivores, from Paleocene to Recent, the shearing blades developed on the last upper premolar and the first lower molars.
All the foregoing South American carnivores display a marked tendency to being darker on the lower than on the upper surface.
The family of the cats, the most highly specialized of all the carnivores, divided in the Tertiary into two main branches.
He examined me the way a zoologist might examine the first live specimen of a new species of carnivore; very interested, very cautious.
There were, it is true, during the Tertiary and Pleistocene, lions and other carnivores considerably larger than the living species.
Its rather generalized habits allow it to exist in areas that will not support larger carnivores or species with specialized food habits.
Fishers are powerful and agile animals, probably for their size by far the swiftest and most deadly of all our forest carnivores.
That the carnivore may live herbivores must die; and that its young may be reared the young of weaker creatures must be orphaned.
There was a certain look a seasoned carnivore developed, a hardened gleam, hungry and haunting, that identified it instantly to others of its kind.
Its methods of attack and combat must have been more like those of modern reptiles than the more intelligent methods of the mammalian carnivore.
Instantly Bradley's piece was at his shoulder, there was a sharp report answered by a roar of mingled rage and pain from the carnivore.
The continual hunt for food may be the motivation for another interesting habit of the mink which is seldom found among other carnivores.
These squirrels were attracted to the carcasses of rodents used as bait for carnivore sets, and caused a good deal of trouble by disturbing the traps.
Since most of the predators are active all winter, while many of the rodents are in hibernation, this can be a period of famine for carnivores.
As yet even the two general types of herbivore and carnivore are so imperfectly separated that it is not always possible to distinguish between them.
So, in our brief visit to the world in times past, we picked out the crab, the reptile, and the carnivore as its rising members.
Had there been any lingering hope in the minds of the men that they had no carnivores to deal with, the ensuing struggle ended it.
In addition to ordinary vegetation, they eat grasshoppers and are fond of flesh, sometimes being caught far from their homes in traps set for carnivores.
The carnivores are fortunately limited in number of species, although the individuals of certain species are at times numerous, but not in general dangerous to man.
Insects and birds and fish, nearly all the herbivorous mammals, and even a great many of the carnivores, help one another and protect one another.
The authors remark that the abundance of several prey species does not cause the weasels to ignore the shrews which are said to be distasteful to carnivores.
Rarely in nature (except for predatory carnivores) is there any significant restriction on the number of calories or serious limitation of the amount of low-nutrition foods available to eat.
A little consideration for its irritable nature is not too great a price to pay for its continued existence in our rapidly dwindling numbers of large carnivores.
Coyotes, ravens, and other carnivores soon remove all the flesh so that there remains nothing but the bones, and even these are scattered by the wolves.
He heard a raucous cry down below, not far away, and glanced down hoping to see one of the carnivores; but the rippling sea of foliage was unbroken.
For the carnivores, however brutal and sanguinary, have only done that which, if there is any evidence of contrivance in the world, they were expressly constructed to do.
Raccoons, more than any other carnivore mentioned above, possess the manual dexterity necessary to pry open the shell of a box turtle and bite away the soft parts.
Badgers and possibly coyotes are probably the only local carnivores (excluding large dogs) that could crack open the shell of an adult turtle by sheer force.
A few carnivores, among them the mountain lion and the fisher, are known to kill the porcupine by flipping it over on its back and tearing it open.
It is the largest Carnivore of Madagascar, being about twice the size of a Cat, but with an elongated body; the color is a tawny brown with no striping.
At no time did they hear the cry of a carnivore, and though many startled animals fled as they approached, they were not once menaced by a wild beast.
Furthermore, its habits change to suit its conditions: thus, where nocturnal carnivores are its enemies, it is diurnal; but where man appears as a chief persecutor, it becomes nocturnal.
Like the birds, the young of some mammals, the carnivores for example, are helpless at birth, while those of others, as the hoofed mammals, are very soon able to run about.
Although they differ extremely in some respects, they are regarded as being more closely related to the carnivores than to the herbivores of the second great branch of the tribe.
The muscle stomach is best developed in herbivorous birds, while both the muscular wall and the horny plate are much weaker and thinner in carnivore wading and swimming birds.
The occurrence of mink away from water can not be considered normal, because this creature ranks second only to the otter, among southwestern carnivores, in its preference for an aquatic life.
Men and beast alike were spattered with white-hot droplets of metal from the seismic recorder as the second shot caught it squarely; and this seemed to be enough for the carnivore.
The relative abundance of the different species, however, is probably much changed by the decrease throughout the whole region of the carnivores, which have been much hunted and trapped by man.
The cries of distress of each one of the band immediately bring together the whole of the band, and they boldly repulse the attacks of most carnivores and birds of prey.
In this connection it is interesting to note that in Alaska we have associated on the same ground the least weasel and the great brown bear, the smallest and the largest living carnivores.
That night, hungry and cold, he slept in the crotch of a great tree while the hunting carnivore roared, and coughed, and growled through the blackness of the jungle about him.
It must have been a very speedy type, which contributed greatly to the preservation of the species in an age when (so far as we know) the carnivores were rather slow and clumsy.
Compared to the other creatures of this world the ants were small, but no lumbering beetle dared to march insolently in their way, nor did any carnivores try to prey upon them.
The young are not born helpless, as is the case among the young carnivores where there is a settled nursery, but are clothed, have their eyes open, and their senses are very alert.
That assuredly is not the effect of an invasion of carnivores, even if we could overlook the absence of such carnivores from the record until after the extinction of the reptiles in most places.
It is interesting to see a pack of these deadly carnivores working, the mother leading and the young skirmishing on all sides, now spreading out, now closing in, like a pack of miniature hounds.
The knife is superior to the carnivore's teeth for tearing meat; the hoe better than the mole's paw for digging earth, the trowel than the beaver's tail for beating and spreading mortar.
Why, if he had such a wall erected across one end of a glen, it might keep the carnivores from his tribe's trees, and there would be no need for more than one or two night watchers!
No carnivore has teeth so admirably adapted to a diet of flesh as the cat, and, in fact, it may be doubted if among all mammals, it has a superior in structural fitness to its life habits in general.
The enclosure contained a herd of goats which immediately upon the advent of the carnivore started a mad stampede to the opposite end of the corral which was bounded by the south wall of the city.
It is well known that the introduction of rabbits into New Zealand and Australia has produced the most unexpectedly disastrous effect upon certain crops, on account of the absence of the fierce and active carnivores which keep in check their excessive multiplication in Europe.