EX-Z3
ƒ/7.7
17.4 mm
1/160
The Red-tailed Hawk proudly clutches a snake that it had just plucked from the trail in front of me.
At times like this, I wish I had my SLR & zoom lens… Well, at least I had the Casio pocket camera.
15 responses to “Today’s Lunch”
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So Steve, a question… do you think the food chain (roughly) reflects increases in complexity?
The plants are eaten by bugs, eaten by snake, eaten by hawk…
>———complexity—————->The less complex organisms require less energy, and dont need such concentrated sources of energy. The complex organisms are energy expensive, and expend complex search strategies to find the most cncentrated energy sources.
I havent reached any conclusions, it’s just what jumps to mind when I see the picture.
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zenera: interesting…. you are what you eat….
which brings us back to oddwick: are you dissing the vegetarians? 😉 I was wondering about the slow burn of fats and proteins versus simple sugars, allowing for more time for going off to think complex thoughts… As an aside, I find it fascinating that the scorpion can eat once a year.
Might an alternative explanation be that in predator-prey networks, the predator has to be more complex to be able to catch its prey?
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great photo of the drama of nature, nice in-flight photo of a hawk.
The World Through My Eyes -
Not a bad shot (English for "Excellent Shot") for a compact, with some shutter delay(?).
Well done! 123
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Steve, I am a vegetarian! Perhaps the modern version of the food-chain reflects the concentration of pollutants, which is why hawks are so susceptible to DDT and the like. The lower animals eat fat-soluble pollutants, and they accumulate with every step up.
Within omnivorous species such as humans, the lower the position you hold on the food chain may reflect survivability. Less cancer, heart stuff, et cetera.
Back on topic, complexity may not be indicative of the position in the predator-prey network… Take the parasite model, which in almost every case I can think of the parasite is less complex than they host. An interesting thought… now that I think it through… in a ‘traditional’ predator-prey relationshpi, such as "I catch and eat you", complexity moves you up the chain. However, with parasites, the most successful seem to be the least complex.
Some parasites have an incredibly complex life cycle, using egg and nymph stages to transmit between hosts, but I think brute force is the key to thier search and survivability strategy.
On your aside… I think scorpions can eat so rarely because they have very rudimentary input filter systems that allow them to scale back thier metabolism very far. Thinking costs a lot, and in a compound manner. The actual act of thinking is energy intensive, the brain uses a full quarter of the metabolic resources of the body. And the more you think, the more you have to hunt to feed that thinking, which takes more energy, and so on and so on…
Then there is boredom, which gives birth to all kinds of expensive thinking. Like photography.
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