11 Animals that Eat Strawberries (With Pictures)

Strawberries are commonly eaten by a range of mammals, birds, and reptiles. As a result, gardeners often grow them behind fences to keep them protected.

Examples of animals that might be stealing strawberries away from your garden include common birds, raccoons, squirrels, insects, deer, and rabbits.

Many of these animals steal strawberries away from humans, which might annoy people who own strawberry crops. You’ll find many pests that are looking to eat strawberries before you get a chance to pick them!

What Eats Strawberries?

These are some of the animals that like to eat strawberries.

1. Birds

Birds are always looking for a way to access your garden and eat some of the produce that grows in it. Whether it is fruits or vegetables, there’s always something inviting for birds to eat from your garden, so you’ll need to look for ways to protect your crops.

Strawberries are among the most popular foods among many birds. Common birds like mockingbirds and house sparrows are highly likely to be looking for ways to pick strawberries from your garden. If you have found strawberries with some dents, then it’s likely that some birds were in action.

To protect your strawberries from “bird attacks”, you might want to keep your berries guarded by using a fence around the strawberries. This will keep the birds away from your crops.

2. Raccoons

Raccoons are highly opportunistic when it comes to food. They’ll eat fruits, nuts, veggies, insects, rodents – practically anything that comes their way! They might even pick up human garbage and find foods inside a trash bin, which is why it’s so common to see raccoons near human settlements.

They’re also very good at finding juicy fruits and eating them. For example, they might go into your garden and steal some of the strawberries that grow there. Or, they might find strawberries in a forest and eat them from there.

Related Article: Do Raccoon Eat Tomatoes?

3. Squirrels

The small rodents are also resourceful. They like to eat smaller foods. Their main food is nuts, but they also like vegetables and fruits quite a bit, so they’ll always look for ways to find strawberries, whether they get them from your garden or find them out in the wild.

If you find small dents in your strawberries – or even worse, find out that the fruits are completely missing, then it’s likely that a squirrel nearby has found your crops and might have eaten the berries.

Read Also: 15 Examples of Symbiosis in Nature

4. Caterpillars (and Other Insects)

There will also be many different insects that will be looking at your strawberries to eat them. Aphids, caterpillars, worms, bugs, and mites all love strawberries, so you can always expect to find them on your strawberries.

Of course, these are all small animals, so they will only eat your strawberries very slowly. Nevertheless, you will still have to be very careful how you deal with them. If you’re too aggressive in killing them, you might risk the quality of your crops. It’s best to avoid using chemicals that are too strong.

5. Deer

Even deer cannot stay away from the sweet taste of strawberries. They’ll try to find them in the wild while they roam the woods. However, if they find themselves near your home, they might also consider eating your strawberries.

If you don’t want large animals such as deer eating your crops, then it’s also best to protect your crops by building a fence or an equivalent. This should be enough to keep deer at bay and protect your crops.

6. Rabbits

Rabbits are also animals that like eating strawberries. While they might be a bit too scared to enter your garden if you have strawberries, they won’t say no to wild strawberries that are widely available in the woods. Again, you might want to protect your strawberries just in case you’re worried that rabbits are eating them.

Related Article: 19 Animals Like Rabbits

7. Hamsters

Hamsters are one of the most popular types of pet in the world. They prefer eating grains as well as fruits and vegetables. To keep their diet varied, some hamster owners will offer their hamsters strawberries. And it’s not surprising that rabbits love the sweet taste of strawberries as they gnaw away at them.

Related Article: 25 Animals Like Hamsters

8. Tortoises

Tortoises are slow eaters. They might have a piece of vegetable or fruit in front of them, but it might take them several minutes or even hours to eat that piece of food. With strawberries, the eating process will be shorter – not only because strawberries are small, but also because tortoises just enjoy the sweetness of this fruit.

9. Guinea Pigs

Like hamsters, Guinea pigs are extremely popular pets around the world. They are fed different types of foods. Primarily, these animals prefer eating vegetables and fruits as well as grains. So many owners like to feed guinea pigs strawberries to keep their diets as varied as possible.

10. Marmots

The marmot is a small animal located in North America and Eurasia. They are rodents that enjoy a variety of different foods – vegetables, roots, nuts, and fruits. One of the types of fruits that these animals enjoy is strawberries. Whether these animals are found in the wild or as pets, you’ll see that they enjoy a sweet meal like this.

11. Slugs

Last but not least, we should also mention slugs as one of the most common eaters of strawberries. Slugs might be one of the most annoying animals in the garden for many people. While they might be good at eating insects in your garden, some slug species will also chew away from your fruits, so some people consider them to be pests!

Conclusion

Strawberries are a very common fruit in many people’s gardens, so many people are surprised that they are constantly being eaten by these animals on this list.

Chris

I am the founder and owner of Fauna Facts. My mission is to write valuable and entertaining information about animals and pets for my audience. I hope you enjoy the site!