Carnivores eat herbivores and are the final link in a basic foods chain. Only the power locked within the bodies of herbivores is available to carnivores. Again, due to the reduction in the amount of obtainable chemical power, carnivorous animals tend to be far fewer in number than herbivores.

Carnivores are slightly more efficient than herbivores at producing use from the power and incorporating it within their bodies, but even so most from the energy is lost as heat via respiration and excretion. As with herbivores and plant material, carnivores do not eat all the herbivores obtainable, and some herbivores die and decay before they can be eaten, so very little of the original solar power is present at this stage within the foods chain.

In some ecosystems you will find secondary carnivores that feed on other carnivores or on both herbivores and other carnivores. For instance, big sharks and killer whales regularly kill and consume seals and dolphins, which are they voracious carnivores of smaller fish. In reality, basic foods chains rarely exist in nature.

Foods webs are far more common, because most animals don’t just consume one kind of foods; they take a variety of prey. This enables animals more security, because if one type of food is unavailable they simply eat another; animals known as diet specialists that are heavily dependent on a single foods kind, such as the giant panda, risk starvation as soon as that food isn’t obtainable to them – perhaps simply because it has been wiped out by disease or the land where it grows continues to be taken over by humans.

Pesky parasites

Parasites form a unique sub-class of predators that occur at each and every trophic level. There are also parasites that molest other parasites, called hyper-parasites. It continues to be suggested that parasites function as essential population density controls for other organisms. Omnivores and decomposers also feed on all trophic levels.