They play important roles in vegetation, dispersion of seeds, digging out mud wallows, and eroding rocks in these islands, one of them being Frégate Island, where 3,000 giant tortoises live in the forests. He also said that tortoises were widespread in ancient times but today they were associated with only a few places like the Galapagos and the Seychelles Islands, where they are the most significant herbivores effectively, and are the islands' equivalent of elephants. He said this is the first time an unexpected event like this has been recorded on video. Justin Gerlach, Director of Studies for Biology at Peterhouse, Cambridge, mentioned in the video that though several accounts of tortoises hunting prey have been witnessed in the island, there has been no documented evidence to support the claim. The hunt for the bird on the log lasted for 92 seconds. The whole event occured over seven minutes, from the tortoise approaching the chick to swallowing it. The chick was trying to escape the tortoise by retreating along the log and was fluttering its wings, to defend itself, but as the bird reached the end of the log, it stopped moving, and eventually fell prey to the tortoise, which closed its jaws on the head of the chick, resulting in its instant death.Īs the chick fell off the log, the tortoise moved to the ground to devour the bird, swallowing it whole. At its usual speed, the reptile was moving towards the tern chick with its mouth wide open. In another video referenced in the paper, Zora mentioned that the carapace (tortoise shell) length of the adult female tortoise was 50 cm. They observed the tortoise at 'Anse Parc', a restored woodland, which harbours a dense population of tortoises. She at once decided to film the seemingly unusual event. Zora noticed the behaviour of the tortoise to be strange, and saw it advancing towards the young tern. Zora and her team had visited a noisy tern colony in Frégate Island, on July 30, 2020, when they observed a female Seychelles giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea) and a lesser noddy (Anous tenuirostris) sitting on a log. The video referenced in a paper published in Current Biology magazine was captured by Anna Zora, co-author of the study and conservation manager of Frégate Island, a privately owned island in the Seychelles group managed for conservation and ecotourism. This is the first time that deliberate hunting by a chelonian species (a reptile of the order, Testudines that includes reptiles like turtles and tortoises) has been documented. However, a recent video of a giant tortoise hunting, killing and consuming a bird, proves otherwise. New Delhi: Tortoises are assumed to be gentle, harmless herbivores that mostly consume small plants, and are not expected to hunt prey.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |