technically... no. you are not a scavenger. The food we buy at the store or eat at a restaurant is not discarded. we buy it therefore it was meant to be given to us to eat (a baby bird does not scavenge out of a mother bird, the mother feeds them. <- could be used as an example to back my statement up). if we were eating out of someone's garbage can, then we'd be scavengers. The fact that our food was meant to be eaten whether we killed it or not means we are not scavengers at all. <S>
"Technically" your definition doesn't really hold up very well either.
"Discarded" doesn't play into it at all... Scavengers commonly steal food from other organisms. They're scavenging, but the organic material hasn't been "discarded".
"Meant to be given to us to eat" doesn't really fit either... A scavenger transports animal matter to feed to it's relatives or offspring. Since the food item was procured through scavenging, the other animals that eat from it are still scavenging, aren't they? Even though the food item was "meant to be given to them to eat". If not scavenging, how would this be described?
I agree, the baby bird isn't scavenging from it's mother. It's being provided for. But it's certainly not predating, either. What if the mother bird scavenged the meal?
A predator can be defined as "An organism that lives
by preying on other organisms." To prey on other organisms can be defined as "To hunt, catch, or eat as prey: Owls prey on mice." Or "To seize as prey; to take for food by violence; to seize and devour."
Prey can be defined as "An animal hunted or caught for food", or "A hunted animal; prey", or "Hunted animals considered as a group; game."
Where would our eating of domestic animals come in? Certainly not in a predator/prey relationship... We don't hunt cows or pigs. We don't catch cows or pigs. We actually shy away from violently killing these animals, and try to make it non-violent...
In defining anything, there are a lot of "can be defined" arguments. Different people define similar things differently.
Some definitions I found for scavenger don't hold water either (IMO)... "An animal, such as a bird or insect, that feeds on dead or decaying matter." Heck, almost all the animals I eat are dead, even if I killed them myself. By that definition, I'm a scavenger... And, if I have leftovers, they'll be in the refrigerator for a few days and even though they may have started the decaying process, they'll still be fit to eat...
Another is "Scavenging, or necrophagy, is a carnivorous feeding behaviour in which a predator consumes corpses or carrion that were not killed to be eaten by the predator or others of its species." An eagle kills a fish. Another eagle steals the fish from the first, and eats it. Is it scavenging? Does it matter what the intent of the first eagle was (whether or not it intended the fish to be eaten)? What if the first eagle picked the fish up off of the ice while a fisherman had his back turned? Because they're the same species of eagle, can they be scavenging at all? What if the fisherman didn't intend the fish to be eaten (maybe to have it mounted, use it as bait, fertilize his garden, or play a trick on his neighbor). Is it even possible for a human to scavenge from another human (by this definition), since they're the same species? Even if the food was discarded? Keep in mind, if it was discarded, it's a pretty safe bet that it wasn't meant to be eaten...
When you grocery shop, you're frequenting areas known to be commonly have meat left there that was killed by someone or something else. Maybe it was killed as food for you, maybe it was killed as a strategy to gain money. Maybe it died "early" so wasn't killed at all, but still deemed "edible" (at least as long as someone else is gonna eat it! LOL!). If this isn't scavenging, what is it? It certainly isn't predatory behavior... As a matter of fact, if grocery shoppers were presented with a live animal in the grocery store, how many would take the opportunity to act in a predatory manner?
