Question

Very short answer type question: What type of organisms are primary consumers?

Answer 1

Organisms are termed as consumers when they are heterotrophs that means they do not produce their own food and they eat other organisms for food. Consumers are typically viewed as predatory animals.

Complete step by step answer:
Consumers are mainly grouped into three types: primary consumers, secondary consumers, and tertiary consumers.
Primary consumers
- They are usually the second trophic level in the food chain.
- They are animals that consume producers for energy and nutrients.
- The producers in the ecosystems are reorganized as plants.
- The primary consumers are the herbivorous animals that eat the plants or grass as food.
- Primary consumers are basically the herbivores of the ocean.
- In the Ocean, the primary consumers are lobster, muscles, and shrimp.
- Shrimp are also considered primary consumers even though they eat phytoplankton, which is a producer rather than a plant. This is because phytoplankton gets energy from the sun, not plants.
- Herbivorous animals feeding on the leaves, grass and fruits of producers are the primary consumers. - These are ants, flies, beetles, locusts, leafhoppers, bugs, and spiders etc.
- Among small animals, like squirrels, flying foxes, cattle, grasshoppers, rabbits etc are also primary consumers.

Additional Information:
Secondary consumers
- Secondary consumers include fish, whales, friendly basking, and whale sharks. They are animals in the middle of the food chain.
- They eat plankton, shrimp and molluscs, which are considered as primary consumers.
- Basking sharks are friendly sharks that do not have any teeth. They filter plankton and other krill into their enormous mouth.
- Basking sharks are the longest shark, however, a little bit smaller than whale sharks.
- In the forest, secondary consumers or omnivores eat primary consumers or herbivores.
- In the forest, secondary consumers are like foxes, snakes, owls, etc.
Tertiary consumers
- Tertiary consumers are called omnivores.
- It is at the top level of the food chain at all trophic levels.
- They are also called scavengers.
- Tertiary consumers must eat other animals, meaning they must be either carnivores or omnivores which means they eat both plants and animals.
- Tertiary consumers can’t be herbivores because they are at too high of a level on the food chain.
- Tertiary consumers are the organisms who eat the secondary consumers, primary consumers, and sometimes producers.
- Like Pelicans are birds of the sea. They eat variety plankton as well as other small fish like carnivores and like stingray is a ray, a flatfish with a tail and wings.
- Stingrays are bottom feeders, that means they eat stuff from the bottom side of their body, where the mouth is located.
- Tertiary consumers are called omnivores. In the forest, tertiary consumers are hawks, wolves, lions and bears.
- Lions feed on herbivores and carnivores like cattle, foxes and others for food.

Note:
- A trophic level is the group of organisms that occupy the same level in a food chain and the same nutritional relationship to the primary sources of energy in an ecosystem.
- Herbivorous animals and parasitic fungi also are consumers.
- Some carnivorous plants, like the Venus flytrap, are classified as both.