So here’s a turtle hunt and eat a bird

In the case of the giant tortoise, the hunting behavior seems to be a clash of ecological curiosities. Ferns nest in the trees of Frégate Island, which is tropical and very forested. But on the ground live its other predators, such as lizards and crabs. This means that the forest floor is lava for any chick that is not yet able to stay out of danger. It tells the bird’s instincts to place it on top of a tree, at all costs. That’s why in the video you can see the turtle protecting itself as it approaches, instead of jumping the leaf litter and running away. “You have a source of meat, but it’s almost something you can’t escape from a turtle anything it can run faster than a turtle, “says Gerlach.” Because it’s a tree nest, it wants to stay off the ground, because there’s all the danger on the ground. ”

What seems like an unfair fight is really dangerous for the turtle. It has a thick shell to protect the body, but the eyes are exposed. And the chick is biting like her dependent on that life because she does a lot. “They don’t like to put things in their eyes,” Gerlach says. “They’re pretty cautious about them. It’s the only vulnerable part of them. So this turtle is really putting it in danger.” Loss of sight and survival becomes much more difficult; lose two and you will soon die.

This is not an easy meal, and it is not pure opportunism. He’s hunting for a turtle as he knows what he’s doing, Gerlach says, until he reaches the edge of the trunk that protects the chick and tells the bird’s instincts to go farther.

But is the turtle’s digestive system also equipped to handle meat? “No one has studied that,” Gerlach says. “They don’t eat meat. Why would you bother looking for it?”

However, he believes that as some sort of cleansing is common among herbivores, they need to be able to extract amino acids and minerals from the meat. After all, he says, animal proteins are relatively easy to digest. “Digesting plant matter is something that is done by evolution,” he says, because plants are made of hard materials like cellulose.

It’s a tragedy of a chick, in fact, a sign of hope for birds on Frégate Island, says Gregory Pauly, curator of herpetology at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, who was not involved in the new role. It means that the birds are back and the turtles are taking advantage of it more than they like. “The number of turtles and birds in this area declined as a result of habitat destruction, species such as rats and large grazing mammals were introduced, and as a result of human exploitation,” he wrote in an email to WIRED. “So the opportunity to observe predatory interactions as described was also not available until recently, when the bird population was reclaimed with efforts to restore habitats.”

How many turtles know how to hunt like that? How often do they do it? “We really don’t know if that’s just an interesting observation, or if it’s really an important development in the ecology of the island’s turtles, and also in the ecology of the island,” Gerlach says. “So many of us” a lot of questions are in the “phase”.

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