QuakerZen t1_j9jvocr wrote on February 22, 2023 at 2:26 PM

Does global warming and the resulting impact on vegetation push typically omnivorous animals into more of a meat based diet? Have we seen any animals shift the core of their diet? Has the opposite been observed where vegetation has taken the bulk of an animals diet?

nationalgeographic t1_j9lnj9y wrote on February 22, 2023 at 9:36 PM

I don't know of any studies that have seen this sort of shift, though omnivory in Carnivora is quite common. Typically, omnivorous animals will alter their diets depending on availability of different types of items, as you've said (i.e., coyotes in wine country eating a lot of grapes), but I don't think veg loss has been dramatic enough for that to show a strong, lasting/scalable signature of any kind yet. Remains to be seen what will happen as animal ranges continue to shift.