This drawn-out encounter – between a lumbering, almost leisurely giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea) and its grounded bird prey – is gruesome to watch. But it's also entirely transfixing.
After all, we've never seen a tortoise 'hunt' anything before. Who knew these dawdling giants had it in them?
"I couldn't believe what I was seeing," says biologist Justin Gerlach from the University of
Cambridge. "It was horrifying and amazing at the same time."
The footage, captured on Frégate Island in the Seychelles archipelago, shows a female giant tortoise slowly pursuing a flightless lesser noddy tern (Anous tenuirostris) chick.
In a new study describing the encounter – said to be the "first documented observation of a tortoise deliberately attacking and consuming another animal" – the researchers indicate the hunt lasted seven minutes in total, including a passage where the tortoise pursued the chick along the top of a log.
The video – captured by Anna Zora, deputy conservation and sustainability manager with the Frégate Island Foundation – lasts for only a fraction of that, but it's enough to unequivocally show a deliberate, calculated attack on the part of the tortoise. READ MORE
