Egg predation or ovivory is a carnivorous feeding strategy in many groups of animals (ovivores) in which they consume eggs. Since a fertilized egg represents a complete organism at one stage of its life cycle, eating an egg is a form of predation, the killing of another organism for food.

Egg predation is found widely across the animal kingdom, including in fish, birds, snakes, mammals, and arthropods. Some species are specialist egg predators, but many more are generalists which take eggs when the opportunity arises.

Humans have accidentally or intentionally introduced egg predators such as rats to places that had been free of them, causing damage to native species such as ground-nesting seabirds. Predatory birds such as ravens and gulls have spread, threatening ground-nesting birds such as sage grouse and terns. Measures to control such predators include the use of poisoned bait eggs.

An ovivore or ovivorous animal is one that eats eggs, from Latin ovum, egg, and vorare, to devour. An obligate ovivore or egg predator is an animal that feeds exclusively on eggs. This is different from an egg parasite, an animal such as a parasitic wasp which grows inside the egg of another insect.

Egg predation is an ecological relationship in which an animal (a predator) hunts for and eats the eggs of another (prey) species. This reduces the evolutionary fitness of the parents whose eggs are preyed on.

Generalist predators can have a substantial effect on ground-nesting birds such as the European golden plover, Pluvialis apricaria: in Norway 78.2% of nests of this species were preyed on. Experimental removal of two nest and egg predators, red fox and carrion crow, raised the percentage of pairs that fledged young from c. 18% to c. 75%. Population increases among many generalist predators such as buzzard, badger, carrion crow, pine marten, raven, and red fox in Scotland have contributed to the decline in several ground-nesting bird species by taking eggs, young, and sitting hen (female) birds.

Corvids such as ravens are intelligent and able to develop novel foraging behaviours. Within the 21st century, little ravens have learnt to depredate little penguin burrows to access the eggs on Phillip Island off southeastern Australia. About a quarter of the attacks were down the entrance hole (for short burrows only); the remainder were by digging a hole through the roof of the burrow. Ravens depredated 61% of monitored burrows.

The primatologist Jane Goodall noted that some birds and mammals used tools to break eggs. Egyptian vultures both drop small eggs to break them, and throw stones at ostrich eggs which are too large to pick up. Several species of mongooses throw eggs at rocks, or pick eggs up and drop them on rocks.