5 ms·
Standard frenzy behaviour for a fox. It's pointless to anthropomorphize them, as it's just natural for them to kill now with the intent of coming back to collec
by kylegordon 8y ago
Standard frenzy behaviour for a fox. It's pointless to anthropomorphize them, as it's just natural for them to kill now with the intent of coming back to collect the bodies for later consumption.
Just like your average labrador will inhale food until it's too large to walk. Binging is a natural instinct in feast or famine capable animals.
- ekianjo 8y agoBased on my experience cats tend to overeat a lot more than dogs.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jonlucc 8y agoIt really depends on the specific animal, but common wisdom is that you can't just leave a bowl of food out for a dog. Cats on the other hand often are free-feeders (leave out a big bowl of food and refill it on a schedule). Of our 2 cats, one will eat until she vomits and one will barely touch food if it's out at the wrong time.
- pxc 8y agoIt depends a lot on the dog— what I've seen with dogs is similar to what you describe with your cats. There are 4 dogs in my house, one belonging to me and three belonging to my roommate. Mine won't really overeat unless she's offered a lot of something extremely appealing (like human food). At least 2 of my roommate's dogs will eat until they make themselves sick, though. The last one, I'm not sure.
- hombre_fatal 8y agoThis is going to depend on all sorts of things, especially how the animal was raised from a bit. In the dozens of cats and dogs we've owned over the decades, we've always kept bowls out for them stocked with food. What I often hear from friends when they discover this is that they'll try to move from their scheduled feeding to free feeding, realize their animal is engorging itself, and then assert "see? doesn't work" or "nope, {cats,dogs} can't do that."
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoMy anecdotal experience agrees with this assessment. My family has always been free feeders and it hasn't been a problem for our dogs.
- usefulcat 8y agoI've had 7 cats at various times in my life and of those only one would eat too much if food was always available.
- cm2012 8y agoCats overeating is 100% genetic. I've raised 12 cats in my life, all fed the same way. Only 2 ever got fat.
- brianbreslin 8y agomy labrador would HAPPILY eat himself into a coma. They are bred to not have the genes that regulate satiety making them super food motivated.
- Aromasin 8y agoCan attest to that. My lab recently stole three pizzas(placed on a raised table twice his height) when we left the room, sicked it all up from the sheer volume, then lapped it all up again; all in the 5 minutes we were out. Their hunger can truly not be sated.
- stinos 8y agoMy lab recently stole three pizzas Working in 'a lab' i.e. laboratory I'm so used to that meaning of the word it took me a few seconds to understand this sentence :P
- libraryatnight 8y agoI imagine the folks in your lab could decimate three pizzas, too.
- analogyexpert 8y agoI could decimate three pizzas and still fight to not have to share that third piece, unless these three pizzas were merely the sacrificial portion of a larger cohort of thirty pizzas.
- brianbreslin 8y agoThis is relevant and just came up when I googled Labrador retriever hungry. http://mentalfloss.com/article/79446/science-explains-why-your-lab-always-hungry http://mentalfloss.com/article/79446/science-explains-why-yo...
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoI don’t know that they are bred for this? I assumed it was natural dog / fox/ wolf / canine behaviour. Probably most wild hunters / scavengers? Either way, dogs are particularly suited to gorging and fasting. And I was under the impression that’s why dogs shouldn’t have free access to food, and why so many pet dogs are overweight.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- lazyjones 8y ago> as it's just natural for them to kill now with the intent of coming back to collect the bodies for later consumption. Do they actually ever come back for more corpses? Or are these, like the article might suggest, actually cases of the fox defending itself from the chicken's ganging up?
- chrisco255 8y agoHens are usually easily frightened especially by a fox. Maybe in the case of 6,000 hens being in one area as article suggested, they can easily swarm a fox...but your average neighborhood coop with less than a dozen...no way.
- alaxsxaq 8y agoThey return which is sometimes the source of their undoing - should someone set a trap at the scene of the original crime.