Once again, "It all depends". I'm just never sure on what the parameters are and whether they were all considered.
We once briefly touched on determination of forage load as relating to the predator/prey relationship. However, if we acknowledge that, at some point, virtually everything is a prey to something else, we find a slippery slope. I doubt that any predator does a taste test on anything else. I believe that it depends more on availability, accessability and ease of capture. If the caloric intake exceeds the energy expended, any predator will predate on anything else, whether it is on land or water.
So, we always have to go back to the Economists favorite term of ceterus parebus meaning all other things considered equal. No matter how badly you want to, you cannot draw absolute conclusions by studying a limited population. That's why we have to have control groups and test groups to do analysis and sampling. And that is only after formally defining the parameters of any analysis or test. Only by considering and studying populations over wide ranges can any credible conclusions be drawn.
