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Filter feeders obtain food by filtering water for nutrient particles. Examples include mysids, flamingos, clams, krill, sponges, and whale sharks. They use a mechanism to collect prey, usually plankton, and siphon it off for consumption. Filter feeding is popular among aquatic organisms, and filter feeders range from small to large, such as the blue whale, the largest living omnivore. Some jellyfish use a fine mesh of tentacles to capture prey and slowly rotate them to their mouth.
A filter feeder, also known as a suspension feeder, is any animal that obtains food by filtering the water for nutrient particles. Examples of filter feeders include mysids, flamingos, clams, krill, sponges and whale sharks. A filter feeder uses a mechanism, such as a filter basket, or baleen (as in baleen and blue whales) to collect aquatic prey, usually plankton (a generic term for small aquatic animals and plants) and siphon it off at the mouth for consumption and digestion. Filter feeders engage in one of four major types of feeding, the others being deposit feeding (eating particles in the soil), fluid feeding (as in spiders and hummingbirds), and bulk feeding (as in beings). humans and most other animals).
Filter feeding is a popular feeding mode among aquatic organisms because it requires little active effort – just float and let the food particles get to you. Of course, there must be a critical concentration of food particles in the water, or the filter feeder will starve. Luckily for filter feeders, the oceans are filled with gigatons of plankton at all latitudes. If an aquatic animal is not a filter feeder, it must be a bulk feeder or a bottom feeder.
Filter feeders range from very small (krill) to very large (blue whale). Because a blue whale is the largest living animal, perhaps even the largest animal that ever lived, and eats other animals for food using filter feed, the blue whale is considered the largest living omnivore. The characteristic little filter feeder, Antarctic krill, rivals humans for the species with the largest biomass on the planet. So, as we can see, filter feeding can be quite an effective feeding strategy. Some filter feeders, like some whales, can feed on other filter feeders.
Some types of jellyfish have an interesting mechanism that they use for filter feeding. Using a fine mesh of tentacles, they capture tiny particles of food. Then these tentacles slowly rotate in a corkscrew motion to bring the prey to the jellyfish’s mouth. Since the tentacles of jellyfish contain stinging cells, they paralyze small prey on contact.
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