Just keep gobbling?
Twitter is entranced with a bizarre video that was posted on Friday showing a group of turkeys endlessly circling around a dead cat.
Jonathan, the Boston-based user who uploaded the clip, said he was driving down the street when he noticed over a dozen turkeys engrossed in a peculiar ritual dance.
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He told BuzzFeed News:
“I never saw a single turkey [on that street] let alone all of these…I noticed they were walking in a perfect circle, not a turkey out of line, so I had to stop.”
Like any rational person, Jonathan recorded the National Geographic moment and shared it online for the interwebs to marvel over:
Freakyyyy!
So what could possibly be the cause behind this ceremonial circling?
Alan Krakauer, a biologist at the University of California, told The Verge the birds may have been performing a “predator inspection,” when weaker animals approach predators to intimidate them in self defense.
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This behavior has been seen by biologists in chickens, pheasants, and quail — where the birds follow the tail in front of them as a way to stick together.
But since the cat is clearly dead in the video, there may be a more depressing explanation behind the behavior: the turkeys are stuck in some never-ending circle, with each bird following the tail before it.
Turkey expert (yes, that’s a thing!) Scott Gardner said:
“It’s not unusual for them to get into those dances where they chase each other around.”
Hmm.. we prefer Jonathan’s theory that the birds are just trying to give the cat a 10th life.
[Image via Twitter.]