Do they vanish? Do other fish eat dead fish?
What about sharks and whales?
In: Biology
They get eaten. “Free meal? Im there!”
Not a fish, but still a marine animal… or the remains of one. Check out [whale falls](https://youtu.be/l7t1WguYJyE?si=v8ytq9rgrkPfhx1E). It really doesn’t take long for a dead *anything* in the ocean to completely disappear.
There are animals that are specified, on land and sea, as “scavengers.” They’re great at eating road kill and other dead stuff. It saves a carnivore a lot of energy to not have to kill its prey if it waits for something else to kill it. And there’s a whoooole lot of scavengers in the animal kingdom. Not to be confused with “decomposers, which in turn are not to be confused with “detritivores.” Those guys do the, well, decomposing.
If it’s got nutrients, something’s gonna eat it. Unless there’s some crazy conditions. Like the cold and lack of oxygen of Mount Everest making ice mummies out of dead climbers or the man-made mummies of Egypt. There’s also fossilization, but even then fossils are rare, as the dead thing needed to be covered in sediment very quickly, like a tar pit or mud/landslide, volcano, etc.
Latest Answers