Can a mongoose eat a fox?

No. A big, hungry animal can only consume so much before starving to death. A fox, on the other hand, can eat a much smaller and much more abundant mammal, and can keep eating the animal until it dies.

So what is mongoose eating?
An estimated three to five kilograms of plant material each day. And there are plenty of them?
The mongoose can eat up to twenty kilograms of plant matter a day.

How about other animals?
A lion, for example, needs ten times the energy and food of a mongoose. The lion will also need all of its energy to maintain itself. It needs blood and blood is very costly to produce.

So you can see why lions have evolved very powerful hunting capabilities to help them in these very competitive situations. The mongoose does not have such a powerful hunting capacity. This is not how an animal would survive in nature.

It would just be in an easier place and not get eaten. But wait?
We are not done. The human body is no exception. It must produce energy the moment we sleep. It produces energy in the same way a mongoose produces: by moving.

So the mongoose can eat almost as much plant material as a human. The human body, on the other hand, is almost entirely composed of fat. And when it gets down to it, this would imply the mongoose would need 10 times more calories a day to get by.

The human body only needs 3. 2 g of carbohydrate, 1 g of protein and 0. 6 g of fat. The mongoose, on the other hand, needs 3. 6 g of carbohydrate, 1. 6 g of protein and 6 g of fat. You could say you will never starve to death.

But would you really eat a human for lunch when there are plenty of food around?
Of course not. The human body will simply stop using the energy it consumes before it falls below what it needs to survive.

A hungry mongoose, on the other hand, will still have enough energy to get by. The mongoose, it turns out, is a surprisingly intelligent predator. Back in the cave, some carnivores were trying to figure out one possible answer to the dilemma posed by a mongoose.

One of the predators, a sabre- toothed cat, figured out a solution to the problem. The cat fed on some of the plant matter, and was then able to turn that plant matter into something useful: fur. And so the cat started eating fur.

He fed on leaves and then fruits and so on. The first, and last, mongoose to become an animal. After a long, tiring winter, a male bison will go out into the cold and wet plains of the Yukon Territory to find some deer, to drink their blood and help them survive the harsh winter.

A male bison goes out in the cold and wet plains of the Yukon Territory to find some deer There is only one problem. A bison's blood contains only four calories per kilogram. A lion's blood contains more than ten times as much energy per gram.

But what the bison does is use the blood of the deer. When a bison drinks this deer's blood, it turns this blood into two new things: fur and fur coat. The fur coat contains a very high concentration of proteins; these proteins are very important for building the mummified, frozen body that bears so many other organs.

But if the bison eats the deer's dry, tough hide, it will also be able to produce more protein. This will increase its total caloric need; it will increase its energy requirement by 20 percent. This means that a bison's need for energy will rise.

And the only way it can get energy is by eating some deer. Why?
Because when the deer are still alive, they are a source of food. This is why we also call a bear a carcass. It is the only part of the animal that provides food.

Back in the cave, some of those predators were trying to figure out one possible answer to the dilemma posed by a mongoose.