Giant tortoise filmed hunting and killing birds in ‘horrific’ footage

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Turtles are widely regarded as quiet, quiet herbivores, but new revelations about a giant of the species hunting, killing and eating a bird has surprised scientists.

Researchers on Frigate Island in the Seychelles have, for the first time, captured the moment when a giant Seychelles turtle turned into a violent predator, stalking, attacking and eating a tern chick.

Previously, all turtles were thought to be vegetarian, except for the occasional case of opportunistically eating carrion, or eating bones or snail shells for calcium.

But since the “tortoise hunting” was recorded last summer, researchers said others in the area have been spotted practicing similar behaviour.

Experts suggest that the entirely new hunting behavior is being driven by an unusual combination of a tern-nesting colony and a group of resident giant tortoises.

Extensive habitat restoration on the private island, which is managed for ecotourism, has enabled seabirds to be recolonized, and there is a colony of 265,000 terns. The ground under the trees in which the colony nests is full of fish, as well as chicks that have fallen from their nests.

The footage shows the tortoise approaching the baby tern, which does not seem to realize the danger it is in, and instead repeatedly approaches the tortoise as it tumbles steadily towards it.

When the tern approaches the striking distance, the turtle closes its mouth, and the blow appears to kill the bird instantly. The footage stops before the turtle starts eating the bird.

“This is a completely unexpected behavior that has never been seen before in wild turtles,” said Dr Justin Gerlach, Director of Studies at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and associate researcher at the University of Cambridge Zoological Museum, who led the study.

“The giant tortoise chased a tern chick along a tree trunk, eventually killing the chick and eating it. It was a very slow encounter, as the tortoise was moving at its natural slow pace of gait.”

“The whole interaction took seven minutes and was very terrifying,” he added.

The turtle attack was photographed by Anna Zora, the director of conservation at Frigate Island and co-author of the study.

“When I saw the turtle moving in a strange way, I sat and watched, and when I realized what it was doing I started filming,” she said.

In most places, the potential prey is too fast or too agile to be captured by giant turtles, the researchers said.

But they suggested that the way the turtle approaches the chick in the record indicates that this type of interaction “happens a lot”.

In the Galapagos Islands and the Seychelles, giant tortoises are the largest herbivores and eat up to 11 percent of the vegetation. They also play an important role in seed dispersal, vegetation breaking and rock erosion.

“These days, the combination of tree-nesting terns and giant turtles on Frigate Island is unusual, but our observation highlights that when ecosystems are restored, completely unexpected interactions may emerge between species – things that may have happened commonly in the past but we We haven’t seen it before,” said Dr. Gerlach.

The research, supported by the Fregate Island Foundation, is published in the journal Current Biology.

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