Cats found to eat more in the winter

Date:

May 28, 2014

Source:

University of Liverpool

Summary:

Cats eat more during the winter and owners should give their pet more food during this time, research has found. The study found that cats ate approximately 15% less food during summer, and the vets have concluded that the extra effort to keep warm in winter and the temptation to rest during hot summer days contributed to the swing in activity levels during the year.

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Caterpillar Gets More from Its Food When Predator Is On the Prowl

ScienceDaily (July 11, 2012) — Animals that choose to eat in the presence of a predator run the risk of being eaten themselves, so they often go into a defensive mode and pay a physical penalty for the lack of nutrients.

But that's not so for the crop pest hornworm caterpillar, a study shows.

While other animals increase metabolism and stop growing or developing during a defensive period, hornworm caterpillars slow or stop eating but actually keep up their weight and develop a little faster in the short term. Ian Kaplan, a Purdue University assistant professor of entomology; Jennifer S. Thaler, an associate professor of entomology at Cornell University; and Scott H. McArt, a graduate student at Cornell, noticed that hornworm caterpillars ate 30 percent to 40 percent less when threatened by stink bugs but weighed the same as their non-threatened counterparts.

"It was a little puzzling. If you're going to shut down, there should be a cost associated with that," said Kaplan, who studied the caterpillars as a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell. "We usually think that you can either grow really fast and not defend yourself, or defend yourself but pay a physical penalty. That wasn't happening here."

Continued: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120711150540.htm