Tortoises, especially the terrestrial varieties are generally known to be herbivorous.
But scientists in the Seychelles captured footage of one of the hulking reptiles engaged in an act of cold-blooded murder.
It appeared that the chick had fallen from its arboreal nest in the treetops and was stranded on a log. Although it backed away to the edge of the log and defended itself from the tortoise with pecks, it was all a futile effort. The larger tortoise clamped its jaws down on the bird’s head, effectively killing it.
The tortoise then climbed off the log to retrieve the dead carcass and swallowed it whole, making it a protein-rich addition to its plant-based diet. The whole morbid interaction took place in seven minutes.
This incident was recorded in a study authored by Anna Zora of the Fregate Island Foundation in the Seychelles and Justin Gerlach of Cambridge University and published in Current Biology.
According to the study, the footage is the “first documented observation of a tortoise deliberately attacking and consuming another animal” and represents “an entirely novel behavioral strategy for any tortoise species”.
The team wrote: “There are reports of Galapagos giant tortoises squashing birds under their carapace and we have heard of tortoises on Aldabra squashing crabs, but these are anecdotal and although it is implied that the act is deliberate, this is unclear”.
What caused the tortoises to change its diet? The extensive environmental restoration on the island which led to a boom in both tortoise and tern populations might have led to this eventuality.
When tern chicks fall from their tree nests, they are prey for a variety of predators such as lizards and crabs. The island’s tortoises might have simply adopted its diet to get easy meals.
“At present we do not know how extensive the behavior is on Frรฉgate; future studies will determine whether it develops further or expands more widely in the tortoise population”, Zora and Gerlach concluded.
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