Predatory Techniques

Abstract

Predators must catch and kill their prey before they can eat it. They do this in different ways, using a wide variety of weapons — the scorpion’s sting, the spider’s web, the sidewinder’s aggressive crypsis and venom, or the flight and stoop of the falcon. Successful predation involves at least five stages: detection of the prey as an object distinct from its background; identification, despite crypsis (Sect. 3.4), aposematism (Sect. 3.8), disguise (Sect. 3.5), or mimicry (Sect. 3.6); approach despite flight (Sect. 4.1), deimatic displays (Sect. 4.7) and so on; subjugation, despite armour (Sect. 3.7), weapons (Sect. 4.6) and other secondary anti predator defences, including autotomy (Sect. 4.4) and thanatosis (Sect. 4.2); and, finally, its consumption (Endler 1986). Animals are almost invariably endowed with multiple defence mechanisms. Some predators seek their prey actively by searching for it (Sect. 2.1); others lie in wait, occasionally in disguise, and ambush it (Sect. 2.2). Finally, certain predators, including vultures, scarcely catch living prey at all, but have secondarily adopted a scavenging mode of life (Sect. 2.3). Combinations of predatory technique are frequently employed.