A carnivore is a mammal with a lithe, powerful body and jaws and four or five toes with sharp claws. It is meat eating but will sometimes eat plants. It is a vertebrate animal that shares other characteristics besides the kind of food it eats.

The families are the weasels, dogs, hyenas, bears, raccoons, civets, cats, hair seals, fur seals and walruses. It develops where there is sufficient food. Because of this, marsupials came from Asia and developed in Australia. Some of them, like the Tasmanian wolf and Tasmanian devil, became meat eaters.

One unique characteristic of it is its teeth. The eyeteeth, or canines, are lengthened into sharp fangs. Along the sides of the jaw, the teeth are shaped like blades enabling a effective shearing action. The jaw has difficulty moving side to side but has a large top to bottom opening. This aides in stabbing and slicing meat.

Some walk on its toes and others on its soles. Its wrist can only move up and down and not sideways. It does not have a collarbone limiting it to a forward and backward movement of the front limbs. It has a large brain and demonstrates a high degree of alertness and intelligence. These features enable it to hunt fast moving game.

Although other types of animals eat meat, they are not classified as a carnivore unless they have these particular features. About 70 million years ago and after the reptiles became extinct, they started to flourish as mammals.

They evolved from early insect eating mammals. They developed in three phases : first, the evolved insect eaters, then animals with separate toes and lastly, webbed feet for water life. They were the principal flesh eating animals found in the northern continent.

The Creodonts were the earliest dating from 40 to 60 million years ago. Because they uses their claws for seizing prey, they never developed hooves. The earliest were small, climbed trees, and walked like bears with a flexible body and limbs, long skull and small brain. As they evolved, teeth with sheering capability became the predominate trait. They grew to 2 to 4 feet long with wolf like proportions.

The dominant species was the Miacids. They were small, forest dwelling animals with long bodies and tails and flexible limbs. They differed from the Creodonts because their brain was much larger. Due to their size, they had to rely on cunning to catch their prey. Their skeletal structure was like current civet cats and weasels. They had short, spreading feet with five toes and retractile claws.

The Miacids is the ancestral base for all carnivores. Their characteristics have evolved into meat eating animals that exist today. Some are small and domesticated like the cat while others are big and dangerous like the tiger but all share a common bond.