Diet-Size Relationship in Animals Disturbed by Humans

The diet-size relationship is a universal principle in the animal kingdom that dates back millions of years. Find out how human activity is disturbing that principle’s balance and the implications for species extinction.

Spending my summers at our family cottage growing up gave me a profound appreciation for Nature. The diversity of animal life was especially intriguing.

One thing that always struck me was that larger animals like deer or coyotes were much harder to spot than smaller creatures like chipmunks and squirrels. I learned that the reason is larger animals need larger territories to provide all the food they need.

This diet-size relationship holds true for herbivores and carnivores. As a rule the larger the diet, the larger the animal, and vice versa.

Animal Diet-Size Relationship Results in U-Shaped Graph

If we plot the various species of animals in terms of what they eat versus their mass, the resulting graph is U-shaped. We end up with large herbivores on the left, smaller omnivores and anminals that eat invertebrates in the middle and large carnivores on the…