When a brown bear eats a salmon, does the bear acquire all the energy contained in the body of the fish?

Question

When a brown bear eats a salmon, does the bear acquire all the energy contained in the body of the fish? Why or why not? What implications do you think this answer would have for the relative abundance (by weight) of predators and their prey?

Answer 1

You are asking about the 10% law as illustrated by an ecological pyramid.

The brown bear only gets about 10% of the energy available in the fish. The ecological pyramid illustrates this by having the higher trophic levels look smaller than the lower levels.

What happens to the rest of the energy? Some of the energy is in molecules or structures that the bear can't digest. Some of the energy was used by the fish in its normal activities, and some of the energy was lost as heat.

Because of this relationship, the mass of the predators in the ecosystem would be about 10% of the mass of their prey.

Answer 2

The amount of energy is finite. What the bear loses in the hunt is (hopefully) regained in the consuming.

The energy contained in the salmon is consumed by the bear.

Salmon eat. Bears eat. Both have an imperative to pass on genes. Bears require more salmon than salmon require bears.

Salmon can spawn easier, and more rapidly, than a bear can cub.

Why do you ask?

Answer 3

The 10% law

Answer 4

in the beginning when a bear is eating to prepare for the sinter, he usually just ravishes the entire fish, and eats every part of it.. but closer to when he's about to have to stop hunting closer towards winter.. he starts getting really picky and basically skinning the fish and eating only that part, because it has the highest fat content providing him with the most energy

Answer 5

you cant leave him alone so that is how he get energy eating things