Tortoise Has Been Caught For The First Time While Approaching And Killing Its Prey

For the first time, researchers have captured a huge tortoise gently and slowly approaching the prey. It's dreadful to see an encounter between a ponderous, almost leisurely giant tortoise and its grounded avian prey. A tortoise has never been seen 'hunting' anything before.

A female giant tortoise is seen gently approaching a flightless lesser noddy tern chick on Fregate Island in the Seychelles archipelago.

From the University of Cambridge, scientist Justin Gerlach explains that at the same time, it was terrifying and magnificent. Gerlach adds that earlier, it was impossible to know whether the tortoise actually killed the animal directly or if it had simply sat down on one and discovered it conveniently crushed dead. While the new footage answers the question. It shows tortoise do hunting and it merely takes them a little longer to complete the transaction, and the prey must be relatively easy to catch.

The hunt took seven minutes in total, according to the researchers, and included a section where the tortoise tracked the chick along the top of a log, which is reported to be the first documented observation of a tortoise purposefully assaulting and digesting another animal.

The footage, which was shot by Anna Zora, the Fregate Island Foundation's deputy conservation and sustainability manager, seems to last just a relatively short time, but it clearly shows the tortoise launching a methodical, calculated attack.

According to Gerlach, it was staring at the tern intently and going purposefully toward it. This was a weird occurrence, and not at all typical of tortoise behaviour. While tortoises like A. gigantea also known as the Aldabra giant tortoise are mainly herbivorous, the researchers claim there have been recent reports of tortoises squashing crabs with their carapaces, as well as unproduced reports of the chiefly herbivorous feeding animals birds. Despite this, no evidence of hunting has ever been found in previous research.

According to the experts, there are evidence that this is a lot more widespread than they thought, at least among Frégate Island's tortoise population. The researchers also mentioned that the tortoise's straight approach to the chick on the log shows that it had previous experience capturing a chick in a similar position.