What do wild animals eat?
People tend to think of wild animals as large animals such as lions and elephants but any animal that is not a pet or being kept on a farm is a wild animal. Even a caterpillar or a starfish is a wild animal.

Imagine that you could go into a wood and discover what all the animals are eating. Where would you start? The best place would be in the ground and you could work your way up to the tree tops.

In the soil beneath your feet are earthworms. An earthworm has a pointed head to help it push its way through the soil. It also has a pair of fleshy jaws, which it uses to take in soil. The earthworm also uses its jaws to pull leaves into its burrow then bite off pieces to eat. As earthworms move through the soil and feed, they sometimes fall into the burrow of a mole. The mole has a set of teeth with points on them which are a little like a crocodile's. When the mole finds an earthworm in its burrow, it can snap it up quickly. Earthworms near the soil surface are not safe either. The probing beak of a blackbird can find them. When it does, the earthworm may be tugged out of the soil and eaten.

The shape of a bird's beak can tell you something about what it eats. The robin and wren are woodland birds, which have thin, pointed beaks. They use them to search for small insects in the soil. The thin, pointed beak can get into spaces that larger blunter beaks cannot reach. The greenfinch is a bird with a heavy, blunt beak. This is ideal for cracking open seeds. The chaffinch and bullfinch are two other woodland birds with blunt, seed-cracking beaks.

The thrush has a large, slightly pointed beak, which it uses to feed on a wide variety of foods, including berries and insects. It can even eat snails but it needs the help of a rock to get its meal. This rock is called a thrush's anvil. When a thrush finds a snail, it takes the snail to the rock and hits the snail against the rock until the shell is broken open. Then the thrush can feed greedily. You may find a thrush's anvil with many shells around it, which had belonged to unfortunate snails.

Snails and slugs live among the plants on the ground and have an unusual way of feeding. They have teeth on their tongues. They use their tongues like sandpaper to rub off pieces of plant and swallow them.

Slugs and worms are a favourite food of the hedgehog. This animal has pointed teeth like the mole so that it can grip and chew its food. Another animal of the woodland floor is the wood mouse. It has two pairs of sharp teeth at the front of its mouth. It uses them to gnaw into seeds and nuts. Further back in the mouth of the mouse are teeth with ridges to grind up its food. The squirrel, which lives in the trees, has similar teeth to the wood mouse because it also feeds on nuts.

As the squirrel scampers up the tree trunk, it passes another woodland feeder. This is a bat roosting in a hole in the trunk. At night the bat will wake up and fly around the tree tops searching for moths. When it finds them it will chomp them up with its pointed teeth.

Although a wood may look a peaceful place, it is teeming with wild animals in search of food and none of the animals is very large. Next time you pass a wood or even a small clump of trees just think about the animals that may be feeding there.

Can you tell what a bird feeds on by looking at its beak?
The shape of its beak can give you a clue. Small birds with thin pointed beaks may feed on insects. Birds with blunter beaks may feed on seeds. A bird of prey has a hook on the end of its beak to help it tear up its food. A bird with a long thin beak, such as a snipe, may use it to probe the soil in search of worms. The hummingbird has a long thin beak for sticking into flowers to drink nectar. The pelican has a large fold of skin on its beak to help it catch fish.

Can you tell what a mammal feeds on by looking at its teeth?
The shape and arrangement of the teeth can give clues about the animal's food. The mole and the hedgehog both have pointed teeth, which help them feed on fleshy animals like worms. The wood mouse and the squirrel have two pairs of sharp teeth at the front and larger teeth at the back with ridges to help grind up food. Deer, cattle and sheep have teeth in their lower jaw for cutting leaves. In the upper jaw is a pad of horn. The teeth press against this like a knife on a chopping board to cut up the food. At the back of their mouths are large teeth with ridges for grinding. Meat eaters such as lions and wolves have huge canines. These are used for stabbing prey. At the back of their mouths are large pointed teeth, which are used for chewing up meat and cracking open bones.

Does an elephant have teeth?
Yes, it does. The tusks are formed from incisor teeth in the upper jaw. At the back of the mouth are four molar teeth. They are larger than bricks. When they are worn down they fall out and are replaced by more teeth from below just as your milk teeth are replaced by permanent teeth. When these second teeth are worn down they too are replaced. This third set of teeth is the last. They are produced towards the end of the elephant's life.

Do whales have teeth?
Some whales, like the killer whale, have teeth and use them for catching and eating seals. Some of the largest whales do not have teeth. They have a curtain of long, broad, flat pieces of tough skin and fibres called baleen plates. The whale uses the baleen plates like a sieve to catch food. It swims into a shoal of large shrimps called krill, opens its mouth and takes in water and krill. The water is then forced out of the mouth through the baleen plates and the krill are left behind and swallowed.

Do any mammals not have teeth?
Yes. The anteater does not have any teeth. It has a long sticky tongue, which it flicks out of its mouth to catch its food.

Will a wild animal eat anything?
No. Each kind of wild animal has a special diet, which keeps it healthy. A fox, for example, gets all its nourishment from its diet of rabbits, pheasants, squirrels, field mice, snails and beetles. If a fox could not find any animals to eat it could not change its diet to plants because its body cannot digest plants. In a similar way, if a deer had no plants to eat but had other small animals close by it could not eat them. The deer's digestive system will only let it eat plants.