Slugs that eat baby birds

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She and Justyna Chachulska, a colleague at the University of Zielona Góra in Poland, were studying common whitethroat birds near Wroclaw, in Poland, when they spotted a slug of the Arion genus in a nest with newly hatched chicks. The next day, the slug was gone, and the chicks were dead with severe injuries on their bodies that hinted at the slug as the culprit.

“When a slug finds itself inside a nest – probably accidentally, or maybe by actively searching for this type of food – it just starts foraging on the living nestlings using its radula, or tongue covered in tiny teeth,” says Turzańska. “The nestlings are unable to defend themselves and are eaten alive.”

Surprisingly, the birds’ parents don’t seem to defend them, perhaps because such predation does not happen often enough for them to have evolved a defence response. A blackcap was even seen incubating a slug feeding on dead chicks.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2102924-monster-slugs-are-devouring-defenceless-baby-birds-in-nests/?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Facebook&utm_term=Autofeed&cmpid=SOC%257CNSNS%257C2016-Echobox