Unpublished: they filmed a turtle when it hunts a bird and eats it

An extremely striking revelation has been demonstrated by a group of researchers who have successfully verified that turtles they are not completely vegetarians as we believed. Thanks to advances in technology, it has been possible to capture in front of a camera a representative of the species hunting and eating a bird.

It is with these images it was verified that the giant tortoises, far from being completely friendly, have a profile rarely seen, since a team of researchers filmed, for the first time, an unpublished sequence, in which one of these animals hunts, to the death, a baby of bird, then eat it.

According to the shocking video, it was filmed in July last year in the forests of the Isle of Frigate (Seychelles) and was captured by Anna zora, deputy director of conservation and sustainability for the island, who has managed to demonstrate some of the first definitive evidence of a turtle attack.

Specifically, the turtle attacked a tern chick, possibly fallen from a tree and hoping to find the safety of a trunk on the ground, where he went to confront the voracious female turtle of the species Aldabrachelys gigantea.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was both horrible and surprising,” he said. Justin gerlach of Cambridge University, one of the authors of the research.

“He was looking directly at the tern and walking deliberately towards it. It was very, very strange and totally different from the normal behavior of turtles, ”he said. Gerlach.

It should be mentioned that the story he publishes Current biology was part of a study with the participation of Cambridge University and, while this is probably not the first time that a similar attack has occurred, it is the first for which there is audiovisual evidence.

The entire clip is about seven minutes long and where you can see the reptile sneaking up on the baby until it reaches a distance where it can stretch its neck out and try to bite it, although the tern is doing its best. to defend himself by pecking his enemy. . Finally he crushes her head with his jaws.

As expected, this turtle behavior raised multiple questions for researchers. This is not the first time that turtles have been known to eat meat or animal parts rich in calcium, such as bones or shells. However, so far there was no evidence that the turtle had killed the animal or had already found it dead.

Despite this, the scientist ventured to clarify that this turtle had hunted successfully before, “it seemed like she knew what she was doing.”