Predation is a biological interaction where a predator (a hunting animal ) kills and eats its prey (the organism that is attacked). Predators are adapted and often highly specialized for hunting, with acute vision, hearing, and sense of smell. Many have sharp claws and jaws to grip, kill, and cut up their prey.
In ecology, predators are heterotrophic, getting all their energy from other organisms. This places them at high trophic levels in food webs. Many predators are carnivoress; others include egg predators. Predation is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation which usually do not kill the host, and parasitoidism which always does, eventually. All these are evolutionarily stable strategies.
Predator and prey adapt to each other in an evolutionary arms race, coevolving under natural selection to develop antipredator adaptations in the prey and adaptations such as stealth and aggressive mimicry that improve hunting efficiency in the predator.
