Kid Territory: What's for Lunch?
The tenrec munches on bugs, making it an insectivore.
A famous folivore is the koala, which only eats eucalyptus leaves.
Do you have a favorite food? Maybe you really like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Maybe you love apples, or perhaps pizza tickles your taste buds! People eat many different kinds of food, and animals do, too. To help us keep track of different animals' diets, we've created names for animals that eat different foods. A few of them you probably already know. If an animal only eats plants, we call that animal an herbivore. If an animal only eats meat, then it's a carnivore. And if an animal eats both plants and meat, then it's known as an omnivore.
"To devour"
Did you notice that all three of those words have the same ending? The ending "-vore," or "-ivore," comes from the Latin word vorare, which means "to devour." (I'll bet you didn't know you could speak Latin!) So, by looking at the first part of the word, we can figure out what the animal is "devouring," or eating.
How about another word, like insectivore. Can you guess what an insectivore eats? Remember to look at the first part of the word. You guessed it! An insectivore, like the three-banded armadillo or the African hedgehog, eats insects! What about a nectarivore? Right again! A nectarivore, like some insects and bats, eats nectar.
Sometimes these words can tell us more specifically what an animal eats. Remember the plant-eating herbivores? Well, some herbivores are folivores! Folivore refers to an animal that eats foliage, or leaves, like the douc langur. In other words, it eats a specific part of a plant.
A mouthful of names
Now that you're getting the hang of this, here's a list of some other kinds of animal diets. See if you can think of some animals that fit these descriptions!
Piscivores:
animals that eat fish.
Sanguinivores: animals that drink blood.
Frugivores: animals that eat fruit.
Mucivores: insects that feed on plant juices.
Humivores: organisms that feed on the dark brown
part of soil that consists of decomposed plants and animals.
Mycovore: organisms that eat fungi.
Saprovores: animals that feed on dead or decaying
matter.
Detritovores:
organisms (like bacteria or earthworms) that eat
decomposing or nonliving material.
Whew! That's quite a mouthful—so to speak! Did you have any idea that there were so many different kinds of animal diets? So, where do you fit in—do any of these terms describe you? Maybe you're an herbivore, or perhaps an omnivore. I wonder if I might be a cheeseburgerivore? Okay, I admit I made up that one. But all this talk about different kinds of "-ivores" has made me hungry!
