The biggest examples I can think of are cows and deer. Numerous times they’ve been caught eating small animals yet are classified as herbivores, why?
In: Biology
Simplicity.
Wiktionary [defines herbivore](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/herbivore) as:
> An organism that feeds **chiefly** on plants; an animal that feeds on herbage or vegetation as **the main part** of its diet. [emphasis added]
As humans (at least, modernish humans in some societies) we love classifying things – coming up with labels and categories for things and putting them in boxes. But reality doesn’t work that way – a lot of the labels we use, particularly in biology, aren’t absolute but have fuzzy edges (species being a classic example). We use the labels anyway because they are convenient or useful. We simplify things to make it easier to understand and to work with.
We just have to remember that a lot of the simple models we use break down eventually.
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