Scientists have found slugs devour live chicks – BBC

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Some slugs may cannibalize the newborn chicks in their nests. To such an unexpected conclusion was made by the Polish ornithologists from the University of Wrocław in the article published in the journal Journal of Avian Biology .

By studying the behavior of gray warblers near Wroclaw, one of these days, scientists have noticed near bird’s nest slug kind of pulmonary snails Arion. The next day the slug was not there, but all the chicks in the nest were dead – they were typical damage – visible and near excrement characteristic of slugs. “We could not believe that slugs can kill chicks, – said the author of Katarzyna Turzhansky. – We interviewed experienced ornithologists, none of them had seen this behavior before »

It is known that slugs can smell, therefore, probably, their smell can attract the chicks, especially in the nests located close to the ground.. It turned out that the parents of the chicks did not protect the offspring of slugs: the researchers observed how the adult female warblers continued to incubate the eggs away from the slug, devouring her offspring

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