All articles tagged with #foraging
A male bottlenose dolphin nicknamed Bubbles at Lady Elliot Island regurgitates prey by causing bigeye trevally to vomit under stress, then eats the regurgitated food. Documented in Ecology and Evolution, this kleptoparasitic foraging appears to be a learned, energy-saving strategy that may involve echolocation cues to identify targets, though more data are needed to determine how common the behavior is among dolphins.
Dolphins off the coast of Queensland, Australia, have been filmed using empty seashells to stun and extract fish—a rare foraging method called shelling. New 2025 footage, along with a Marine Mammal Science study, shows an adult female and her calf shelling together, hinting that mothers may teach this technique to offspring and that the behavior could spread within populations. Previously, shelling was only documented in Shark Bay, Western Australia; researchers plan further study to understand learning pathways across popuations.
Five blue whales and four humpbacks were tagged to measure heart rates during lunge-feeding; results show heart rates rise to about 21.9 bpm (blue whales) and 28.2 bpm (humpbacks) during lunges and then slowly fall between lunges, indicating a mix of anaerobic energy and rapid recovery that enables feeding while conserving oxygen. Resting rates were as low as 18.5 bpm, highlighting a shared metabolic pattern and potential health indicators for whales amid changing prey and noise pollution.
Researchers from Murdoch University fitted whale sharks with small on-body cameras to document their underwater foraging, uncovering six frequent low-effort feeding tactics and a broader range of strategies than other large filter feeders, including active feeding when krill patches appear, offering new insights into how these endangered giants eat and survive in tropical waters.
Producing a pound of honey is a massive cooperative feat: roughly two million flower visits by a colony, involving tens of thousands of foraging trips and a combined flight distance that researchers estimate between about 55,000 and 90,000 miles, far surpassing what any single bee does in a lifetime. The workers live only about 6–8 weeks, and the waggle dance helps them coordinate locations and distances to the best flowers, turning a jar into a record of collective labor rather than the work of one bee.
Two-and-a-half years of GPS tracking across Yellowstone show ravens rarely follow wolves long distances; instead, they use a strong memory to repeatedly visit areas where wolf kills are likely, effectively building a mental map that guides scavenging across the landscape.
Researchers tracked 69 ravens and 20 wolves in Yellowstone for over 2.5 years and found that ravens rarely shadow wolves; instead they rely on long-term memory of areas where wolf kills are common, sometimes flying up to 155 km to likely carcass sites, indicating sophisticated spatial memory and flexible foraging rather than simple pursuit.
A 1.6-million-year-old fossil assemblage from Koobi Fora, Kenya shows early Homo used a mixed strategy to access meat—both scavenging and hunting—transporting the meatiest parts for processing and later breaking bones for marrow, suggesting meat consumption evolved gradually in response to ecological conditions.
Foraging for wild food, especially mushrooms, can be rewarding but risky due to the potential for confusing edible and toxic varieties. Experts emphasize the importance of proper identification, knowledge, and legal considerations to avoid health hazards and environmental impact. Beginners are advised to start with simple, easily recognizable plants and seek guidance from experienced foragers to safely enjoy the benefits of wild foods.
A recent study suggests that scavenging, particularly consuming carrion, played a crucial role in human evolution by providing a reliable and energy-efficient food source, challenging traditional views that emphasized hunting as the primary means of obtaining meat.
A French village's ALS cases linked to consumption of false morel mushrooms containing neurotoxins, highlighting the dangers of wild mushroom foraging and potential environmental contributors to neurodegenerative diseases.
A Golden Retriever named Huxley dramatically changed his eating habits after his vegan uncle visited, developing a new habit of foraging for fruits and berries from the garden, which surprised and amused his owner and netizens alike.
A new study challenges the fruit-diet hypothesis for brain evolution in primates, finding that larger-brained primates like spider monkeys and capuchins do not have more efficient foraging routes compared to smaller-brained animals. This suggests that factors other than foraging efficiency, such as memory, tool use, or social complexity, may have driven the evolution of large brains in some species.
A new study challenges the leading hypothesis that primates evolved large brains to find food more efficiently. By tracking the foraging routes of large-brained primates and smaller-brained non-primates in Panama, researchers found no significant difference in foraging efficiency, suggesting that other factors like memory, tool use, or social complexities may have driven brain size evolution.
New research suggests that individuals with more pronounced symptoms of ADHD tend to achieve higher reward rates in an online foraging task, spending less time at a single location and more frequently switching to other locations. The study indicates that ADHD symptoms may encourage a propensity to leave current resource areas in search of new ones, leading to a greater preference for exploring new areas. This behavior aligns more closely with the predictions of optimal foraging theory, suggesting that the prevalence and persistence of ADHD in human populations may serve an adaptive function in some environments.