What’s for Dinner
After Dark?
Some animals hunt for food at night.
Lots of animals are awake at night. They are nocturnal. These animals use amazing senses to find food in the dark.
Some animals hunt at night to avoid competing with daytime hunters. Some animals use the cover of darkness to sneak up on their prey.
Raccoons
One night last fall, a raccoon stole one
of my bird feeders. Its flexible fingers unhooked the feeder and carried
it across my yard.
Raccoons’ front paws have more nerves than most animals’ paws. The nerves make their fingers sensitive. They can feel crayfish hiding in muck or acorns tucked under leaves. Raccoons often use touch instead of sight to hunt. They don’t need daylight to find food.
Bats
“Hey! Did you see that bat?” my son asks.
My son and I
love to sit in our backyard and watch bats swoop out after sunset. They
don’t compete with birds for day-flying insects, such as butterflies.
Instead, bats catch night-flying insects, such as moths.
Bats find their prey through echolocation. This means they send out high-pitched sounds, like screams that people can’t hear. Bat screams bounce off bugs. When bats hear the echoes, they know where to find dinner. Bats can hunt in complete darkness.
Opossums
Opossums have long, sensitive noses. They can find their food by smelling it. One night, an opossum raided my trash can. Opossum noses sniff out smelly things like garbage and dead animals.
Opossums eat almost anything they find, including fruit, eggs, and bugs. They might discover a tasty worm just by rooting around with their noses.
Owls
When we went camping in Colorado, my son found a wad of fur and bones at the base of a tree. It was an owl pellet, about the size of his thumb. Owls can’t digest fur and bones, so they spit them up as owl pellets.
From the pellet, we could tell that a rodent had been
the owl’s last meal. How had the owl found a rodent in the dark?
Owls have great eyesight. Their big eyeballs are shaped like tubes. The long shape lets in more light.
Owls also have soft feathers. This makes their flight very quiet as they swoop down on their prey.
Nocturnal animals rely on strong senses to hunt for dinner. Think about how you would find food in the dark. Which senses would you use? Would you be as good at finding food as these nighttime hunters?
