What is a Filter Feeder?
A filter feeder, also known as a suspension feeder, is any animal that obtains food by filtering water for nutritious particles. Examples of a filter feeder include mysids, flamingos, clams, krill, sponges and whale sharks. A filter feeder uses some mechanism, like a filter basket, or baleen (as in baleen and blue whales) to gather aquatic prey, usually plankton (a blanket term for small aquatic animals and plants) and siphon it to their mouths for consumption and digestion. Filter feeders engage in one of the four major types of feeding, the others being deposit feeding (eating particles in soil), fluid feeding (as in spiders and hummingbirds), and bulk feeding (as in humans and most other animals). Filter feeding is a popular feeding mode among aquatic organisms because it requires little active effort: just float around and let the food particles come to you. Of course, there must be a critical concentration of food particles in the water, or the filter feeder will starve. Thankfull
Filter feeders (also known as suspension feeders) are animals that feed by straining suspended matter and food particles from water, typically by passing the water over a specialized filtering structure. Some animals that use this method of feeding are clams, krill, sponges, some fish and sharks, and baleen whales. Some birds, such as flamingos, are also filter feeders.
