An omnivore is an organism that eats plants and animals. The term stems from the Latin words omnis, meaning “all or everything,” and vorare, meaning “to devour or eat.”
Omnivores
play an important part of the food chain, a sequence of organisms that produce energy and nutrients for other organisms. Every
food chain
consists of several trophic levels, which describe an organism’s role in an ecosystem.
Omnivores
generally occupy the third trophic level alongside meat-eating carnivores.
Omnivores
are a diverse group of animals. Examples of
omnivores
include bears, birds, dogs, raccoons, foxes, certain insects, and even humans.
Animals that hunt other animals are known as predators, while those that are hunted are known as prey. Since
omnivores
hunt and are hunted, they can be both
predators
and
prey
.
Omnivores
can also be scavengers, animals that feed on the remains of dead animals. For example, bears eat twigs and berries but will also hunt small animals and eat dead animals if they happen to stumble upon them.
Omnivores
have evolved various traits to help them eat both plants and animals. Many
omnivores
, such as humans, have a mixture of sharp teeth (for ripping through muscle tissue) and flat molars (for grinding plant matter). However, some
omnivores
, like chickens, have no teeth and swallow their food whole. Generally speaking,
omnivores
have a stomach with one or more chambers and a specialized digestive tract to process food.
Since
omnivores
have a diverse diet, they have the advantage of being able to survive in a variety of environments. While a meat-eating
carnivore
would quickly go extinct in a habitat devoid of
prey
, an
omnivore
could still surive by eating plants.
