What Animal Is At The Top Of The Food Chain

An animal's ranking on the food concatenation depends on where its meals place on the ladder. That puts plants on the lesser (they make all their nutrient), polar bears on top and people somewhere betwixt pigs and anchovies. Lisa Chocolate-brown for NPR hibernate caption

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Lisa Brown for NPR

An animal's ranking on the nutrient chain depends on where its meals place on the ladder. That puts plants on the lesser (they make all their food), polar bears on acme and people somewhere between pigs and anchovies.

Lisa Brown for NPR

When it comes to making nutrient yummy and pleasurable, humans clearly outshine their fellow animals on World. Subsequently all, you don't see rabbits caramelizing carrots or polar bears deadening-roasting seal.

But in terms of the global food concatenation, Human sapiens are definitely non the caput honchos.

In the new study, ecologists specifically calculated human's trophic level — a number between ane and about 5.5 that tells you how much energy it takes to make a species' food.

Plants and algae, which use free energy from the dominicus to produce all their food, sit at the lesser of the food concatenation, with a trophic level of 1. Right to a higher place them are herbivores, such equally rabbits, cows and deer, which accept a trophic level of 2.

Next come up the omnivores that eat a mixture of plants and herbivores. That's where humans rank, with a trophic level of ii.two. Above usa are carnivores, such as foxes, that eat only herbivores. At the top of the scale are meat-eaters that don't have whatever predators themselves, such as polar bears and orca whales.

Instead, we sit somewhere between pigs and anchovies, scientists reported recently. That puts united states of america right in the middle of the chain, with polar bears and orca whales occupying the highest position.

For the start time, ecologists have calculated exactly where humans rank on the food chain and how information technology's been changing over the by 50 years.

One tendency is clear: Humans are becoming more carnivorous.

On average, people around the world get almost lxxx percent of their daily calories from fruits, vegetables and grains. The other 20 percent comes from meat, poultry and fish, scientists at the French Research Plant for Exploitation of the Sea in Sete found.

"We are closer to plant eater than carnivore," the study's lead author, Sylvain Bonhommeau, told Nature. "It changes the preconception of being superlative predator."

But the meat-to-plant ratio in our diet has been rise since about 1985, the scientists found. And it's China'south and India'due south growing dear of chicken and pigs that is primarily fueling the contempo change.

"With economic growth, these countries are gaining the ability to support the human preference for high-meat diets," Bonhommeau and his colleagues wrote in Proceedings of the National University of Sciences.

To place humans on the globe food network, the ecologists carefully analyzed the food supply for 176 countries from 1961 to 2009. They got the information from statistics kept by the Food and Agronomical Organisation of the United Nations.

Diets — and thus rankings on the food concatenation — varied widely from country to country. For instance, in parts of Africa and Southeast Asia, people eat even so primarily a vegetarian diet, with up to 96 percent of their food coming from plants. At the other extreme, diets in Iceland, Mongolia and Sweden are about 50 pct meat and fish.

Not surprisingly, the U.South. ranked closer to the meat-loving countries than the constitute-lovers. Only Americans' location on the global nutrient chain has really dropped a small amount since 1961 — perhaps because we've finally started cutting down on those burgers and steaks.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/12/08/249227181/between-pigs-and-anchovies-where-humans-rank-on-the-food-chain

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