eli5: Why are herbivorous animals usually fatter/bigger than carnivorous animals?
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It’s mostly a Perception thing on your part. Animals will generally adapt to fill a niche. The largest animal ever the blue whale is a carnivore. But it doesn’t need to move too fast to catch its prey. The lion has to catch its food being too big makes that difficult. As to why some herbivores are larger depends what they eat. A lot of larger herbivores like Buffalo are called ruminants they have complex stomachs to digest plant matter in an efficient way. But they have to eat a lot of material and spend large portions of their day just grazing. On the small side many rodents or birds ( generally small animals) are herbivorous but target high calorie easy to digest foods like nuts, fruits, or flowers.
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