Some more classes of Animals

Cannibals

A cannibal is an animal that feeds on others of its own species. This is not an animal unnatural characteristics: around 140 different species show cannibalistic tendencies under various conditions. Cannibalism is most common among lower vertebrates and invertebrates often due to a predatory animal mistaking one of its own kind for prey. But it also occurs among birds and mammals, especially when food is scarce.

In sexual cannibalism as recorded for example for the female red-back spider, black widow spider, praying mantis, and scorpion the female eats the male after mating (though the frequency of this is often overstated).

The more common form of cannibalism is size structured cannibalism, in which large individuals consume smaller ones. Such size structured cannibalism has commonly been observed in the wild for a variety of taxa, including octopus, bats, toads, fish, monitor lizards, red-backed salamanders and several stream salamanders, crocodiles, spiders, crustaceans, birds (crows, barred owls), mammals, and a vast number of insects, such as dragonflies, diving beetles, back swimmers, water striders, flour beetles, caddisflies and many more.