But from the gull’s point of view, it’s a “beautifully strategic attack.” Easy Targetsīut why are gulls just now targeting seal eyeballs? “It’s a cruel way to go,” says Gallagher. In many cases, once a gull pecks out the eyeballs, other kelp gulls join in and begin to eat the seal’s exposed areas, such as its underbelly and genitals, the scientists observed.
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(Also see " Baby Harp Seals Being Drowned, Crushed Amid Melting Ice.")Ī snail will make a nice snack for a seagull, if it can figure out how to crack the shell open. “A blind seal cannot forage, cannot find mom, and will get attacked by other gulls,” says Gallagher. In the study, kelp gulls were successful in plucking out eyeballs in roughly 50 percent of observed attacks. The unprotected pups might then fall prey to land predators such as lions and hyenas-and now, seagulls. To supply that milk, the mother seals must occasionally go hunt fish, leaving the pups alone at the colony for several days. Life for a Cape fur seal pup is pretty tough to begin with.įor one, the babies can’t swim and have to rely on their mother’s milk, says Michelle Jewell, a behavioral ecologist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research who wasn't involved in the new research. “It is not a pleasant behavior to observe, as the seals completely freak out and make a lot of noise,” says Gallagher, whose study was published August 14 in the African Journal of Marine Science. (Also see " Gulls Be Gone: 10 Ways to Get Rid of Pesky Birds.") The behavior seems to be entirely new to science-if a little tough to stomach, says study lead author Austin Gallagher, a postdoctoral researcher at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.
Since blinded seals can't find help from other seals and easily succumb to more attacks, the birds have discovered removing eyeballs is an especially efficient way to get a meal. Seagulls have developed a hunting strategy never before seen in the animal world-eating the eyeballs of live seal pups, a new study says.ĭuring the past 15 years, scientists have logged around 500 instances of kelp gulls ( Larus dominicanus) attacking and attempting to eat the eyeballs of newborn Cape fur seals ( Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus) in Namibia’s coastal Dorob National Park (map).
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