What is Fluid Feeding?
Fluid feeding is one of five major feeding modes used by organisms. The others are filter feeding, deposit feeding, bulk feeding, and phagocytosis. Fluid feeding is defined as getting your nutrients by consuming the fluids of another organism. Animals which practice fluid feeding include hummingbirds, spiders, aphids, vampire bat, ticks, mosquitos, and leeches. Except for hummingbirds, that’s veritably a rogue’s gallery of reviled organisms. Many fluid feeders justifiably have a bad reputation. Although the “fluid” in question may be botanical in origin, when it involves animals, the fluid is blood. So many fluid feeders are bloodsuckers. But fluid feeding is obviously a successful mode, and has probably been around since insects first crawled onto land about 428 million years ago, during the Devonian period. Fluid feeders need some way to pierce the protective wall (skin or plant walls) getting in the way of the fluid, then some proboscis-like appendage for sucking out all the fluids.
