What are the organisms that eat other organisms called?

Question

Question

This question was previously asked in

RRC Group D Previous Paper 18 (Held On: 6 Dec 2018 Shift 1)

Answer 1

Important Points

In simple words, 'eating' refers to the process of taking the food inside the body, breaking it into smaller parts and then digesting it.
The digested forms of food are then absorbed by the body to obtain energy.
This mode of nutrition is known as holotrophic or holozoic nutrition.
It involves the process of ingestion, digestion and egestion.

Key Points

Organisms are divided into autotrophs and heterotrophs based on their nutrition.
Autotrophs do not depend on other organisms for food and are divided into 2 types:
- Photosynthetic - are those organisms that can make their own food in presence of sunlight. Example - Plants.
- Chemosynthetic - or chemotrophs can obtain their energy from inorganic substances. Example - Sulphur bacteria
Heterotrophs depend on other organisms for food and can be divided into 3 types:
- Holotrophic - or holozoic organisms take the food inside their body, break it down into smaller parts and then it gets digested and absorbed by the body to get energy. Example - Human.
- Parasitic - are those organisms which live on or in the body of other organisms called hosts, from where they obtain their food. Example - Lice, tapeworms.
- Saprotrophic - obtain their food from dead and decaying organisms. Example - Fungi.