Why do some animals (like spiders or lizards) spend so much time just doing nothing? What is happening and why?
In: Biology
Doing things consumes energy.
Imagine if you drove your car around all day every day; you’d need to put a **ton** of fuel in there to keep it going.
Same thing for living creatures. Creatures that are highly active (birds, rodents, etc.) eat an absolutely massive amount of food compared to their size. Some birds eat double their own body weight in food every day. Imagine a 150 pound human eating 300 pounds of food every day. That’s the price for moving around a lot.
So some animals go the opposite route. Move very little, eat very little. This works especially well for ambush predators like spiders. Make the web and then just wait. No use in burning excess energy. When something lands in the web, go eat it and wait some more.
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