Scavenger

Scavenging, or necrophagy, is a carnivorous feeding behaviour in which a predator consumes corpses or carrion that were not killed to be eaten by the predator or others of its species. Scavengers play an important role in the ecosystem by contributing to the decomposition of dead animal remains. Decomposers complete this process, by consuming the remains left by scavengers.

Well known scavengers include vultures, burying beetles, blowflies, yellowjackets, and raccoons. Many large carnivores that hunt regularly, such as hyenas and lions, will scavenge if given the chance or use their size and ferocity to intimidate the original hunters.

Animals which consume feces, such as dung beetles, are referred to as coprovores. Animals which primarily consume dead plants are referred to as detritivores. The eating of carrion from the same species is referred to as cannibalism.

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  Vultures feed on a carcass of a Wildebeest
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  Jungle Crow feeding on a small dead shark
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  Harvestman eating the tail of a five-lined skink
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  Coyote on elk carcass in winter in Lamar Valley
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  Spotted hyenas feed from a giraffe carcass amongst a large number of vultures

As a human behaviour

Men scavenging a dead horse during World War II (at the end of the Battle of Berlin), 1945

In humans, necrophagy is a taboo in most societies. In the Qur'an slanderers are stigmatized as those who eat the flesh of the dead body of the person they slander. The Aghori, a Hindu sect known to live in graveyards, according to a Persian source and nineteenth century British accounts, were necrophagous. There have been many instances in history, especially in war times, where necrophagy was a survival behavior.

In 2004, Dennis Bramble and Daniel Lieberman proposed that early humans were scavengers that used stone tools to harvest meat off carcasses and to open bones. They proposed that humans specialized in long-distance running to compete with other scavengers in reaching carcasses. It has been suggested that such an adaptation ensured a food supply that made large brains possible.

The eating of human meat, a practice known as anthropophagy (and known more commonly as cannibalism), is extremely taboo in almost every culture.

References

• Merriam-Webster's Dictionary
• Smith TM, Smith RL (2006) Elements of Ecology. Sixth edition. Benjamin Cummings, San Francisco, CA.
• Chase, et al. The Scavenger Handbook. Bramblewood Press, Santa Barbara, CA.
• Rufus, Anneli and Lawson, Kristan. The Scavengers' Manifesto. Tarcher, New York.