Hardcore Seagulls Straight Eating Baby Seal Eyeballs
Nature is a terrifying.
In the latest dispatch on the nature-is-a-monsoon-of-chaos-and-hostility beat, seagulls have started eating baby seals’ eyeballs.
A 15-year study of gulls in Namibia’s coastal Dorob National Park logged about 500 instances of seagulls tearing the eyes out of newborn Cape fur seals to snack on, according to research published this month in the African Journal of Marine Science.
The torture doesn’t end there. Blind baby seals aren’t the best equipped at fending off attackers, so they’re easy targets for future attacks. Just tiny, waddling buffets.
It’s assumed that the gulls started this gruesome hunting method because the seal population boomed and there were just more of them to eat.
“It is not a pleasant behavior to observe, as the seals completely freak out and make a lot of noise,” researcher Austin Gallagher told National Geographic, presumably declining further comment on what he sees when he closes his eyes at night after 15 years of watching this horror show.
