Some of these animals are fantastic hunters that only rely on scavenging in extreme food shortages. Others are just too lazy to hunt down their own meals. Nevertheless, all of them have rightfully earned the title of scavenger.
1. Vultures
It just wouldn’t be right for me to make a list of scavenger animals and then not start with vultures. You could almost say they’re the face of scavengers. Their main source of food comes from dead animals, so they’re actually obligate scavengers. While it sounds gross to me and you, it’s great for the environment. They clean up the carcasses, get rid of the horrid smells, stop diseases from spreading, and return the nutrients to the ground.
2. Bears
Bears are omnivores, so they’re not obligate scavengers like vultures. It differs from bear species to bear species, but they’re all called opportunistic scavengers. Black bears mostly eat whatever they can find, but they don’t eat a lot of meat (only 10% of their diet is carnivorous).
On the other hand, grizzly bears consume what they can find as the seasons change. They wait until late summer, when a lot of the bison bulls die while competing for females during mating season. They also steal carrion from other animals because very few predators are willing to fight them. Our friend, the brown bear, scavenges on clams and crabs in coastal regions.
3. Hyenas
These Kalahari Desert animals are one of the top predator species in Africa. 70% of their diet comes from their own kills, while the rest consists of whatever they can find. That’s just one of the major differences between hyenas and wild dogs. Because of the competition they face in the wild, they’ll eat anything from vegetable matter and animal droppings to carrion.
4. Wolves
All the amazing wolves of the world are more than capable of securing their own live prey, especially since they travel in packs. But food scarcity is a real problem and everybody needs to eat. So, in addition to deer, reindeer, moose, and elk, all wolves, including timberwolves and gray wolves, settle for carrion and carcasses every now and then. This makes them facultative scavengers, like many of the others in this list.
5. Sharks
If you’ve ever wondered what sharks eat in the wild, you’re about to find out. They’re opportunistic scavengers, so they’ll eat anything and everything if it’s easily available, and that includes marine debris. In fact, great whites love finding the biggest whale carcasses, while tiger sharks enjoy dead sea turtles. Not all sharks are like this, though. Some species, like whale sharks and basking sharks are exclusively predators and planktivores.
6. Lobsters
There are many differences between lobsters and crabs, but this isn’t one of them. We’ll look at crabs and their scavenging behavior later, but lobsters are opportunistic scavengers. They hunt for fish and clams and eat many dead critters and decaying matter way down on the bottom of the ocean. They’re also cannibals, especially if they’re really desperate and extremely hungry, like in captivity.
7. Raccoons
Raccoons get a bad rap because they’re dumpster divers with a plethora of diseases that can get pretty dangerous when threatened. They don’t like to hunt for their food and they’d much rather forage through trash or search for remains left by predators. They also settle for insects and their larvae and steal bird eggs from nests because of how easy it is to find. It could be a lack of hunting skills, or perhaps it’s laziness. Their ways aren’t ideal, but they do play an important part in their environment, just like vultures and other scavengers.
8. Eagles
While everyone’s out there thinking of vultures and ravens as the main scavenger birds, golden eagles happily scavenge on deer and elk carrion with no spectators. Plus, they’re one of the animal species with the best eyesight, so they’ve got a lot going for them in the meal-finding department. All eagles are opportunistic scavengers, so they hunt for prey and dead animals.
Eagles in areas with a lot of roadkill and many predators will consume a lot more carrion than those that have access to more live prey. They’re highly territorial, especially when breeding season comes around, which leads to a lot of fights over carcasses, including dead fish.
9. Ravens
Ravens aren’t just opportunistic scavengers; they’re opportunistic omnivores. All of their food, not just their scavenged meals, is considered opportunistic. They have many tricks up their sleeves to find food, but the majority of their meals come from landfills and predator leftovers. Sometimes, they’ll sit and watch while waiting for the predators to be done so they can take over.
10. Crabs
Many animals prey on crabs, so they have to eat to stay beefed up and full of nutrients, right? Since they’re going to get eaten anyway, there’s no point in sourcing clean and healthy foods. Instead, they just follow a facultative scavenger diet and eat anything from dead animals to decaying plants and other crabs. They also eat algae and hunt live invertebrates, plankton, and mollusks.
11. Coyotes
Now that we’ve reached the end of the list, I’ve concluded that there are actually a lot of scavengers and there isn’t much that separates them. Coyotes aren’t different from the rest, because they also adapt their diets to survive. They mostly eat small rodents, like mice and rats, which are pretty easy to catch themselves. Juvenile coyotes that haven’t quite gotten the hang of hunting learn to stalk and pounce by catching grasshoppers and other creepy crawlies. Adult coyotes add carrion, livestock, pets, and garbage to their menu from time to time.
