What Eats? - A Food Web Website

August 9, 2017 2:21 PM

Welcome to What Eats? This is a website specifically for kids seeking information about the relationships between predators and their prey. I discovered this site because I wanted to find out what eats Jellyfish. And then I wanted to know what eats Sharks. But they don't know what eats honey badgers yet.
posted by King Sky Prawn (23 comments total)

But they don't know what eats honey badgers yet.

Time, the devourer of all things?
posted by nubs at 2:24 PM on August 9, 2017 [8 favorites]

They're missing a lot of really good animals!

✖️ Cassowary
✖️ Kiwi
✖️ Emu
✖️ Okapi
✖️ Narwhal
✖️ Nautilus
✖️ Coati
✖️ Hyrax
✖️ Pangolin

Oh, I didn't notice it's for kids. I guess kids only care about boring animals.
posted by aubilenon at 2:34 PM on August 9, 2017 [9 favorites]

what eats Sharks

"As for shark predators, one thing that will eat a shark is another shark—with big sharks chowing down on littler ones."

Exactly as I (more entertainingly) related.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:36 PM on August 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

The entry for cow neglects to mention that sometimes humans eat cows.
posted by aubilenon at 2:39 PM on August 9, 2017 [3 favorites]

Yes they are leaving humans out. I've seen crunchy jellyfish on the menu in Vietnamese restaurants (though I've never been brave enough to try it).
posted by Bee'sWing at 2:53 PM on August 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Oh, by the way, this inspired me to look up what (else) eats jellyfish.
posted by King Sky Prawn at 2:56 PM on August 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm a little disappointed.

I know it's for kids, but still, I'll bet you a large amount there are kids who want to know what eats Bryozoans, especially since the answer includes nudibranchs
posted by deadbilly at 2:59 PM on August 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

Wow, this site looking really coo--

The main predator of jellyfish is other jellyfish

Aw, man. Yeesh.
posted by gwint at 3:23 PM on August 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

Mola molas are terrifying to me, the idea that something can just grow huge by being nutritionally useless, lazy, and too thick-skinned to be worth attacking.

They make me uneasy in the same way as the idea of gluttonous and unthinking Elder Gods, or incompetent white men failing up the corporate ladder. Such power and mediocrity.
posted by ikea_femme at 4:36 PM on August 9, 2017 [3 favorites]

(mola molas eat jellyfish)
posted by ikea_femme at 4:37 PM on August 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Somebody in this thread is gonna get mad and build a semantic web of predators and prey, and Skynet will read that web and game the ecosystem to get us up to our butts in whatever human-eating wolves eat.
posted by ikea_femme at 4:42 PM on August 9, 2017

I think in a previous thread we established that librarians eat models and models eat physicists.
posted by ejs at 4:57 PM on August 9, 2017 [6 favorites]

I once found the remains a pangolin that had been eaten by a leopard, Aubilenon. There was a large pile of pangolin scales, some bones, and some leopard poop.
posted by ChuraChura at 4:58 PM on August 9, 2017 [4 favorites]

Skynet will read that web and game the ecosystem to get us up to our butts in whatever human-eating wolves eat.

Don't human-eating wolves eat humans? I'm already way more than up to my butt in human.

BRING IT, SKYNET!
posted by aubilenon at 5:01 PM on August 9, 2017

This site is charming.
posted by subdee at 5:21 PM on August 9, 2017

I'm already way more than up to my butt in human.

Not sure how your private life is relevant; but rock on I guess.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:33 PM on August 9, 2017 [3 favorites]

Related: FishBase (http://www.fishbase.org/search.php)

Records trophic relations of a bunch of aquatic species, mostly fish.
posted by wormwood23 at 5:59 PM on August 9, 2017

Strangely evasive when asked what eats humans?
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 6:19 PM on August 9, 2017

This reminds me of my brother's questions when we were kids.

- WHO WOULD WIN? A GREAT WHITE SHARK? OR A TYRANNOSAURUS REX?
- Well, one of them swims and the other one doesn't, so that would never happen.
- Ok... BUT WHO WOULD WIN?
posted by aniola at 7:06 PM on August 9, 2017

This reminds me of back in the late 90s, - when Discovery Channel was still mostly showing documentaries - and a friend named it his favorite thing to have on in the background: "It's just stuff eating snakes, and snakes eating stuff."
posted by Anoplura at 7:55 PM on August 9, 2017

Oh! Useful! A friend just told me his sin his absolutely obsessed with this very subject and asks about it constantly. I passed it on to him, so he won't have to make stuff up.
posted by louche mustachio at 8:29 PM on August 9, 2017

"✖️ Emu
...Oh, I didn't notice it's for kids. I guess kids only care about boring animals."

Kids love emus. Source: three children, and three local emus, who (I can reliably inform you) eat plants (grass, fruit) and bugs and also make a sound like a very low-pitched motor revving, and also are super-sociable and will come check out the humans in their enclosure (and also are allowed to free-roam near the humans).
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:55 PM on August 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

- WHO WOULD WIN? A GREAT WHITE SHARK? OR A TYRANNOSAURUS REX?
- Well, one of them swims and the other one doesn't, so that would never happen.
- Ok... BUT WHO WOULD WIN?

Since they can't meet on the battlefield directly, we have to look at the evolutionary record:

-Great White Shark: Has been around for approximately 400 million years; has survived 4 mass extinction events.
-The T. rex: was alive during the late cretaceous, approximately a 20 million year time span. Didn't make it through the Cretaceous-Permian mass extinction.

I gotta give it to the shark; call your brother, let him know.
posted by nubs at 8:10 AM on August 10, 2017