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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTake a break: WTF Is Going On With These Creepy Turkeys Circling A Dead Cat?
Are they holding a funeral in reverence of the feline? A protest over the sheer numbers of domestic turkeys whose lives are lost to the cat food industry?
Some social media users speculated that the birds could actually be turkey vultures, but Pat Leonard from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology told The Huffington Post that the birds are definitely turkeys.
Andrew Farnsworth, a research associate with the lab, told HuffPost that hes not an expert in wild turkeys specifically, but his suspicion is that the circling is some sort of mobbing behavior.
It would be a reasonable explanation to this that, despite being dead, the cat represents a threat to the turkey that should be driven away, he said in an email. So they are mobbing it in the same sense that crows and many other birds mob owls.
He noted that it was very unlikely that the turkeys plan to eat the cat.
Other bird experts concur.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/turkeys-circling-dead-cat-video-mystery_us_58b86bf2e4b01fc1bde6daf6?
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)mfcorey1
(11,001 posts)Zoonart
(11,879 posts)this afternoon circling the White House.
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)Similar to another type known at DU.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)Jim Beard
(2,535 posts)it and keep doing it in shifts during the day..
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)I was thinking "turkey vultures" but that's been discounted.
AngryAmish
(25,704 posts)Or at least the internet told me so when I looked it up yesterday. About setting a pecking order.