Eating in the Extreme

Our appetite for salt is programmed into our brains. Now scientists believe that cocaine and heroin are particularly addictive in part because they usurp that programming.

consume
Tea is India's most popular drink, consuming 837,000 tons of it every year. The ritual of drinking chai transcends all boundaries, and roadsides are dotted with chai wallahs who serve it boiled up with spices, sugar and milk.

Fossil hunters from Europe have discovered one of the largest predators ever to have lived: a whale that could devour other whales, with a mouth 9 ft (2.7 m) long and 7 ft (2.1 m) wide.

Is competitive eating disgusting and gluttonous or a sport no different than anything else we compete at. No matter what side you take, watching competitors consume massive amounts of food at blazing speeds is remarkable.

Indian officials are blaming the blackouts, which have left a tenth of the world's population without power, on "energy-hungry states guzzling more than their allotted power" and crashing the grid.

lap up
Anteaters are edentate animals. They make up for their lack of teeth with an extremely long tongue which they use to lap up the 35,000 insects they consume whole each day.

With wings that beat up to 200 times a second, hummingbirds are able to hover, fly backwards, and even upside down. With a metabolism set on overdive, they consume more than half their body weight in nectar each day.

The lengths, and heights, that goats will go to to sate their appetite for salt might flummox the average witness and make mountain climbers jealous.

Anacondas squeeze until the animal dies of asphyxiation. Stretchy ligaments in their jaw allow them to swallow their prey whole.

Farmers love ladybugs for their appetite. They voraciously consume plant-eating insects, such as aphids, and in doing so help protect the crops.