Lana
No. Humans destroyed all the food.
Baby, I was BORN THIS WAY!
probably.
Cetacea
It's an interesting question and one I have not really thought about to be honest. I don't think it's a common occurence, when it does occur it is probably due to human intervention, for example when animals can obtain food easily through foraging in bins you may on occasion get a case like this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-493355/Four-times-proper-weight-George-5lb-hedgehog-goes-crash-diet.html
The reason it does not occur commonly is that the weight is more or less naturally regulated by the demands on the wild animal. First of all as someone pointed out, most wild animals are unlikely to encounter an overabundance of food. They usually also have to work to get food, so for example walk a long way to graze or in the case of predators, actively hunt, so they burn of a lot of energy like that. Furthermore, obese animals are likely to be less fit than the ones that are not so, say you had an obese cheetah, he would be less likely to run down prey so he would not be able to eat regularly, so his weight would drop down again. Obese prey animals on the other hand may be slowed down by excess weight and are likely to be eaten.
knut
Yes, there is. Obesity is very common in animals that need to live on fat reserves for a long time where they are either hibernating or preparing to go without food.
Bears is the nature's jojo dieters. They spend the spring, summer and fall eating a lot to gain extra weight which they'll lose during the months of hibernating. When they wake up they will be almost starved and repeat the cycle.
That's just one example, but there are others out there.
Orignal From: are there overweight/obese animals in the wild?
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