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What Type of Consumer Is a Rat?

Nature is complex and balanced. In every ecosystem, animals and plants exist that maintain that balance, regardless of size, diet or type. Each species is fed on, feeds on others, or both. This interdependence creates a critical cycle in which nutrition is passed along from one animal to the next.

The Food Chain
- In order to understand what kind of consumers rats are, it is important to know the food chain. The food chain consists of several levels called trophic levels. Each level contains different types of consumers. Plants lie in the first trophic level as primary producers. Primary producers create food for primary consumers, secondary consumers and tertiary consumers. Plant-eating animals are primary consumers, small meat-eaters are secondary consumers and large predators are called tertiary consumers.
Rats
- Rats are primary consumers. It is common knowledge that rats will eat almost anything, scavenging through garbage to find their next meal. In the wild, their diet follows the same principles. It consists of plants and other small primary consumers, such as insects. Since rats eat both plants and meat, they are considered omnivores. Even though they feed on other animals, rats do not fall under the secondary consumer category, because the diet of secondary consumers is restricted only to primary consumers.
Rats and Other Consumers
- Primary consumers, such as rats, are crucial to the survival of secondary and tertiary consumers. Their job is to provide nutrition for predators that are higher on the food chain in a process called the biochemical cycle. In this cycle, plants provide nutrients that are eaten by primary consumers. The primary consumers take in the plants' energy and provide nutrition for the secondary consumers. In turn, tertiary consumers gain those nutrients from the consumers below them. Once animals die, their nutrients decompose into the soil to be picked up by plants. The cycle then starts again.
Nutrient Movement
- Not all the nutrients from primary consumers are passed on to secondary consumers. When a rat, for example, ingests nutrients from plants or small insects, it will use about 90 percent of that energy for survival, such as growth, body heat and escaping predators. Once the rat is eaten by a secondary consumer, the remaining 10 percent is passed on to the predator.

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