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Top 10 Animal Dieters

By Alison Kim Perry

It's 3 p.m. at the office, and even though you ate a hearty lunch a couple of hours ago, you're scrounging around in your desk drawer looking for something -- anything -- to eat. So much for that New Years resolution to start your diet this week.

Think that when your hunger pangs hit, you've got it bad? Try telling that to many of our animal friends in the wild who don't always know when they'll eat again. In fact, many of these animals go a quite long time between rations. We're talking days, months and even up to a year for a few.

Let's take a look at 10 animals around the world who take dieting to the extreme.

10: The Tick

The tick is one of the animals on our list that doesn't need solid foods for nutrients. Blood is its meal of choice. It needs blood to grow into each stage of its lifecycle (egg, larva, nymph and adult). Once a tick is full from sucking off a source, like a deer, dog, rat or even a human, it stores the blood in its body, giving it an engorged look. A well-fed adult tick can live as long as two years between meals.

Many people think ticks are insects. Actually, since they have eight legs and no wings, they're arachnids, like spiders, scorpions or mites. Ticks climb up tall grass and when they sense a host is nearby, through odor or body heat, they crawl on to it.