How Much Do Animals Eat?

While the wildlife receive expert-level care which includes a specialized diet to meet their nutritional needs while maintaining a good body condition, we thought it would be fun to see how you size up to animals eating habits around the world! 

Humans - the average human eats about 3 pounds of food per day. Let’s see how that compares to the animals we know and love!

Cougars will eat about 8-10 pounds of food per day. Depending on their activity levels they can eat up to 20 pounds at a time and then fast for a few weeks. They’re usually fed daily at Oatland though, with fun enrichment scattered in there too! 

Bison eat about 25 pounds of food per day! They will eat mostly grasses, hay, and pellets at Oatland with some fruits and veggies thrown in as a snack! 

Wolves eat about the same amount of food that humans do! 3-4 pounds per day!

Snakes like the Indigo snake will eat every week or so with their prey being 2-3 times the size of their heads! Once a snake eats its prey, it can take a week or more to digest it!

Now let’s look at the biggest eaters in the animal world!

Elephants - Elephants are herbivores (vegetarians) who can eat over 250 pounds of food per DAY and up to 600 pounds if they’re really feeling hungry! About 80% of an elephant's day is spent grazing! 

Blue Whale - More impressively, the Blue Whale eats only Krill (tiny shrimps) and will consume 10-20 TONS (20,000+pounds of food daily!). That is about 70- to 80-thousand Big Macs! 

Hummingbirds - Eat only nectar from flowers (or your bird feeders) and the occasional insect. They burn their calories so fast that they eat TWICE their body weight in food EACH DAY!