Predatism is the practice that occurs among living beings that chase others, capture and eat. Generally, they are wild animals that can be terrestrial or aquatic and, for the most part, they are carnivores, but they can also be omnivores. In the ecosystem, the practice is seen as a disharmonious interspecific relationship, when one species brings harm to the other.

Some of the most striking characteristics of predatory animals are that they have large teeth and are agile. Predatism happens based on two premises: the need for food or the dispute over territory.

Types of predators

– Monophages: they consume only one type of prey and tend to be very hungry if there is a shortage of their type of food.
– Polyphages: they consume different types of prey and live where there is a lot of vegetation. They are wilder animals that live in closed woods.
– Oligophages: consume few types of prey.

Who are the current predators?

The man is also considered a predator, besides him there are animals that crawl, with legs, wings and flippers. Meet some of them: scorpion, wolf or gray wolf, lion, hawk, rattlesnake, hyena, tiger, white shark, praying mantis, among others.

What were the first predators on the planet?

According to BBC Brasil, the first predators existed about 540 million years ago. Even without teeth, these animals killed their prey in another way. Called ‘anomalous shrimp’, the predator was two meters long and used a pair of claws to capture its prey in the depths of the sea.

But the world of predatism does not live only with large animals. Experts heard by the BBC said that “the world of microbes is full of tiny killers, capable of causing a massacre on a microscopic scale”.

There are also researchers who argue that the real first predators in the world would be some molecules, which used nucleic acids to catalyze other molecules, that is, they acted as predators.

Other types of disharmonious relationships

– Cannibalism: it is when a being like another of the same species.
– Herbivorism: when an animal feeds on plants.
– Parasitism: it happens when a parasite lives inside a host and removes from it all the food it needs to survive.
– Symphony or slavery: it is when a living being takes advantage of the work or product produced by another living being to feed itself.
– Amensalism or antibiosis: occurs when a certain population expels harmful substances to some species that has its development impeded.

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