Re: What is the hungriest animal?

Question: What is the hungriest animal?

Well that depends on how you define
"hungry"

 "Eagerly desirous, craving" - The
Reader's Digest Great Encyclopedic
Distionary

But how to measure "hunger"?

For shear volumne, Blue Whales probably
take the prize at about 8 tons of krill
a day. 
http://www.nmfs.gov/prot_res/cetacean/cetacean.html


For voracious appetites, the pigmy
shrew takes it, eating twice its body
weight in insects a day 
http://museum.nhm.uga.edu/~GAWildlife/Mammals/Insectivora/insectivora.html

Note the correlation between size and
"hunger" .  This is based on a biological fact
that heat loss scales by surface area (i.e. approximately
the square of body length) while heat generation scales
by body mass (i.e. the cube of body length). 
http://biology.wsc.mass.edu/biology/courses/hoag/vertphys/97spring/metrates.htm
However, very big animals simply have very big appetites!
Notice this applies to mammals only since they are homeotherms.
Other animals do not maintain a constant body temperature, so
their food needs are considerably less.


For most wide ranging, human beings
take the prize, eating almost anything
and consuming almost everything! 
http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Environment_and_Nature/



And a hungry mind "grazing on the 'net"
 
http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/k12/livetext-nf/docs/graze.html