This is an ecology question: When a brown bear eats a salmon, does the bear acquires all the energy contined?

Question

in the body of the fish? why or why not?

Answer 1

No, because the digestion process isn't 100% efficient.

The bear will expend some energy digesting the fish. Bacteria in the bear's intestine will acquire some of it, which really isn't useful to the bear, except to keep the bacteria alive. Some of the rest will end up deposited somewhere in the woods.

Answer 2

This question should consult and look at the the trophic levels/ Trophic pyramid for more answers.

This brown bear will get all the energy in the fish but will not use it all as gettin the energy is not efficently done. As stated in the Trophic pyramid model, secondary consumers (brown bear) will only aquire 10% of the energy contained in the primary consumers (fish). This goes for the fish only aquiring 10% of the energy from the primary producers(plant life). As shown here in the trophic levels the bear acutally aquires only 1% of the plant life energy that was conusmed by the fish.

Since the bears metabloism is not efficent uses more energy to get net energy and 10% is all that is really aquired. This example is the opposite for pollutants in the food chain. Biomagnification is the opposite plant life can have low concentrations but because bears need to eat many fish to get their energy alot of the polluntants magnify in the bears.

HOpe this helps

Answer 3

Let's first assume that the bear eats the entire fish, this is unlikely due to the fact that the portion of the fish the bear is interested is the fat and meaty portion of the fish. Following the digestion process the bear will produce excrement and will relieve itself somewhere in the woods. Even though the excrement would seem useless to us, mother nature will use the excrement for the purpose of fertilizing the plants and trees. In the old west pioneers used dried buffalo chips as a source of energy to heat and cook and most animal and human manure is of a fairly high calorific value. The bear also will produce gases such as methane and will discharge those gasses into the atmosphere and we know what happens when methane is burned. I would use the word converts rather than aquires as the bear will convert the fish into usable and stored energy and will relieve himself of the waste that his inefficient body cannot absorb.

Answer 4

the bear uses energy to chew and swollow the salmon so if for instance the salmon has 500J's of energy the bear may only increase its energy reserves by 400j because it is using energy in the oesophogus digesting and in the mouth chewing and swollowing, but the bear will get all the fish's energy

Answer 5

You're referring to the energy pyramid or ecological pyramid. This pyramid is used to show you the 10% law which tells us that approximately 10% of the energy from one one trophic level (salmon) goes on to become available to the next trophic level (bears).

Answer 6

Yes, in a manner of speaking (if you are considering energy in the form of caloric intake), but most of the energy is offset by the energy the bear expends in eating and digesting the fish.

Answer 7

Bears strip and eat only the fat from the salmon.
The balnace is eaten byt other fish or sometimes birds.

Answer 8

of course not, even if we look away from complications like efficiensy of methabolic pathways and such, a part of the fish comes out the other end...