1.Coprophagia.
Coprophagia is a term that refers to the consumption of feces. Yes, poop.
Even though it may sound unsettling, it is a behavioral mechanism developed to consume all the nutrients in the food completely.
chimpanzees take to such behavior seldom when the food they eat is only partially digested and excreted. To make use of all the nutrients present, these creatures consume their excreta again. This is in contrast to rabbits that regularly consume a part of their feces called night feces, as they are nutrient dense.
2.Non-destructive parental cannibalism.
Non-destructive parental cannibalism is the phenomenon in which an adult consumes a part of the young ones without posing any potential harm to the young ones.
The Dracula ants are accustomed to feeding on the blood of its own larva by chewing a hole onto the larva. Vampire finches consume the blood of its unborn.
3.Herbivores eating meat.
Herbivores, the vegetarians of the animal kingdom can also consume animals or animal parts that are found to be lying around from time to time.
It is hard to imagine cows and deer eating meat but they do so when they have a hard time finding nutrient-rich food.
4.The mate eaters
Some insects like the Preying mantis, black widow spider, and jumping spiders are among few species of insects that eat their mates. To ensure that their genes are passed on the males surrender themselves to their mates.
This may range from the female mantis that bites off the male mantis’ head during copulation to the female black widow spiders that devour their mates when the male place themselves between the fangs of the female.
On the other hand, the female jumping spiders tend to munch on the male spiders that fail to attract them sexually or advance them at wrong times.
5.The puke eating skua birds
Yes, you read it right. These birds are just too lazy to find a prey so they bully and pester their fellow skua birds or other birds until the victim pukes all the content.
This partially digested food becomes the meal for our violent skua bird. To top this, skua birds are also famous for its liking towards baby penguins
6.Stone and iron piece eaters
The ostriches consume rocks and pebbles along with their meals to aid them in digestion.
Some even go the next step and store the stones in the gizzard which is one of the 3 parts of the birds’ stomach to help them with digestion in the future.
With a strong stomach and the capacity to digest everything easily, the ostriches are capable of eating iron pieces too.
7.tear drinkers
When it is hard for butterflies, moths, and bees to obtain sodium through their diet, they go after tears of animals including humans. Some moths have specialized appendages that allow them to drink tears from sleeping birds without irritating the birds.
The Amazonian moths are known to drink the tears of the turtles.
Some bees called sweat bees feed on both the tears and the sweat of humans. Such bees tend to prefer human tears over other food items even when all of them were accessible equally to the bees.
The bees also obtain some proteins from the tears.
8.The mice that eat their own tails
Mice don’t like long tails as they make them susceptible to infections and pain.
So they bite and chew off their tails.
9. Animals that drink and smoke
Primates like vervet monkeys have developed a liking for alcohol and they are also found to taste drinks left unguarded by people.
The liking had developed as a result of regular consumption of fermented sugarcane. Some of them tend to be extreme drinkers and create ruckus too.
The Indonesian orangutan started smoking when someone threw a lit cigarette into the cage and from then has got addicted to smoking. Just like humans, it shows withdrawal symptoms like throwing tantrums if it does not get its daily dose.
10. Osteophagia
Even though bones are one of the hardest materials which are indigestible in most cases, some animals like zebras and giraffes are capable of ingesting and digesting this calcium and phosphorous-rich meals.
The osedax worms play an important role in clearing up the ocean by consuming the bones of dead whales. It is also known to feed on a variety of bones such as cow bones.
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