I remember watching a show about either electric eels or electric catfish, and I could see the live fish thrashing around in the stomach of the electic eel/catfish. They are fed 12lb (5.4kg) of fish a day, plus a vitamin supplement, with the daily afternoon feeding time advertised as a visitor attraction. Their stomachs are all lined with a thick muscle that squeezes and constricts their prey. Now I just watched a video of a pelican swallowing a duck (or at least the video claims it to be a duck). First it was a pelican that swallowed a live pigeon in England. In deep water, white pelicans often fish … They will also eat amphibians (such as frogs), turtles, crustaceans and even other small birds and bird eggs. When a whale or large fish swallows a small fish whole (and alive), what actually kills the fish? The vast majority of the pelican diet is made up of fish and a pelican is capable of eating a fish up to 30 cm (1 ft) in length. Can a pelican's digestive system handle the big difference (feathers vs scales)? I know this is kind of a strange question, but it is marine related. The large intestine is greatly reduced in birds when compared with mammals and plays practically no role in bird digestion. They usually catch fish and other aquatic animals near the surface of the water. They store bacteria which are essential in the breakdown of cellulose. Q: To which family do the cormorants in Europe belong and what other species of cormorants exist? When mythbusters did the shark week, they talked about predators who eat other animals whole. Like mammals, birds do not produce the enzymes that allow them to digest cellulose so they can only do so by housing these bacteria. Why have pelicans switched from eating fish to eating other birds? What do pelicans eat? There are currently five pelicans living in the 58 acre (23 hectare) park, all bred in captivity, four of them from eastern Europe and one from Louisiana in the US. Understanding birds' different digestive organs and their eating process can help birders be more knowledgeable about the best foods for birds and why a healthy diet is important for every bird. It is important that the fish be able to swallow their food whole. The lining is as thick as steer hide or thicker and the sharks they tested had between 2000 and 4000 pounds of crushing force. Anyways, heres the video: Birds do not chew or digest food the same way as humans or other familiar mammals do. Many fish have no teeth and those who do can not bite and chew as we do. For example, in Africa, the pink-backed pelican generally takes fish ranging in size from fry up to 400 g (0.9 lb) and the great white pelican prefers somewhat larger fish, up to 600 g (1.3 lb), but in Europe, the latter species has been recorded taking fish up to 1,850 g (4.1 lb). A: 'Our' cormorant, Phalacrocorax carbo, belongs to a larger family, the Phalacrocoracidae, which is closely related to pelicans.Overall, there are 36 species worldwide, and all of them are fish eaters, living at sea or on large inland waters.