Predation is when one organism consumes another organism. The organism that consumes is the predator, and the organism that gets consumed is the prey. Now often, predators are going to be carnivores, or meat eaters, animals that feed on flesh. A special case of predation is herbivory, which is predation when an animal consumes plant tissue. And often this is going to be done by herbivores or plant eaters, animals that feed on plant matter. Now predators can actually help play a role in keeping prey populations below carrying capacity, which can be very important for communities. Likewise, herbivore populations can be balanced by predation, also disease. And it should be noted that plants have evolved defenses against herbivores.

Now we can see some examples of predation right here and some examples of meat-eating. And I just got to say, really kudos to this heron, which speared the crap out of that fish. I mean, I couldn't believe it when I saw this image. Now, predators and prey, herbivores, and plants, they're all part of this evolutionary arms race. Right? You know, it's like we were talking about the rabbit, it runs fast to get away from a predator, not just because running fast is cool.

So we're going to take a look at some defenses that organisms have, and we're going to categorize them as constitutive defenses and inducible defenses. So constitutive defenses are always present regardless of predators being around or not. The stick bug is a great example. Always looks like a stick, always going to be hard to see. Another example in the case of plants would be thorns. You know, thorns are grown on the plant, they're just there, that's sort of a constitutive defense for it. Now inducible defenses are physical, behavioral, or chemical traits that are induced in response to the presence of predators. And you can see here that this cat is about to get it from this skunk, which has an inducible defense that is chemical. It will spray it. Nasty stuff.

Alright. With that, let's go ahead and flip the page.