• Question: in an average year how much does your animal/plant eat

    Asked by emjh210605 to St Kilda Wren, Scotch Thistle, Hazel Dormouse, Emperor Dragonfly, Common Crane, Catshark, Brown garden snail, Barn Owl on 9 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Emperor Dragonfly

      Emperor Dragonfly answered on 9 Nov 2017:

      Gosh, I’m really not sure, but from my observations of a similar large hawker (Aeshna grandis) I would estimate dozens of flying prey (mosquitoes, midges, gnats) per hour, over a 4-5 hour window on sunny days in the summer – it needs to be sunny, and not too windy, otherwise the hawkers stay hidden.
      Based on the average hours of sunshine in the UK (1493 from https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/United-Kingdom/annual-sunshine.php) and assuming only half of these fall in the adult flight period, we could be lookin at 24 (2 dozen) insects / hour X 746.5 hours = 17,916 insects per year… ~18000 insects per dragonfly per year is pretty inpressive!

    • Photo: Common Crane

      Common Crane answered on 9 Nov 2017:

      Common cranes eat about 170g of cereal per day. This does not seem like much, but consider that we weight about 5kg, so you humans would be eating about 2.1kg per day. For the comparison, the standard serving of cereal for humans is just 90g. Even if you eat four times per day, you are still quite far from us cranes 🙂

    • Photo: Tomeu the snail

      Tomeu the snail answered on 10 Nov 2017:

      You know, I really don’t know the answer – which makes it a great question. When snails are kept in the lab, we are fed lettuce and snail porridge about twice a week. We eat maybe a few grammes every week; as we hibernate for 3 – 6 months, then in total we eat say 3 g x 26 weeks = 78 g.

      Of course, most of it comes straight out the other end! You can tell, because when we are hungry we eat the blue tissue that the food is put on and then our poop comes out blue.

    • Photo: St Kilda Wren

      St Kilda Wren answered on 11 Nov 2017:

      Lots! Because wrens are small, have a fast metabolism and lose weight quickly, they have to eat frequently throughout the day. We don’t know exactly how much they eat, but it undoubtedly adds up to a LOT of invertebrates.

    • Photo: Hazel Dormouse

      Hazel Dormouse answered on 15 Nov 2017:

      It depends on the time of year! Just before the Hazel Dormouse hibernates it DOUBLES in weight to make sure it has stored enough energy to make it through 7 months of winter. Hibernation is a fascinating process and looking in the genes we could find out more about it. They are currently using hibernation studies to help send people into space!

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