From Aditya Sapre

Dusky eagle owl vs rufous treepie. Feb. 2026

Near jabalpur City Madhya Pradesh.

  • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
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    14 days ago

    That reminds me of 2 posts I saw today.

    The first was a service dog at a zoo and the African painted dogs all started getting excited and coming up to the glass where the service dog was. Everyone was all “aww, cute puppers!” but those painted dogs are very aggressive pack hunters. That stuff likely would have become lunch if not for the glass.

    The other one was of people that raised a crow and let it go but it comes back. They were petting it and everybody thought that was cute. It was a female crow doing courtship behavior. It’s imprinted and sees the human as its mate and is asking you to impregnate it! 😳

    All natural behaviors, though both uncomfortable in their own ways! 😄

    • teyrnon@sh.itjust.works
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      13 days ago

      I believe African painted dogs have the highest hunting success rate on the continent. They’re dogged Pursuits of their prey, not unlike how humans used to hunt, is unmatched by any other wild animal in Africa. I think, actually that tiny little cat, the smallest cat in the world that lives in Africa, that actually has a higher rate now that I think about it it’s like 90% or something crazy.

      • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
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        13 days ago

        I’ve seen posts on both of those pop up this month. The painted dogs in the story i mentioned, and i think some center or zoo was promoting the birth of the killer cat, the black-footed cat, though googling it, that’s a 60% success rate. Checking for owls, the 2 studies that popped up first has Snowies around 50% and Screech Owls at 56% on vertabrates and 83% on invertebrates. Take that, black-footed land owl.

        I forget if I’ve seen the black-footed cat, but I have seen the dogs a few times. I’m a fan.

            • teyrnon@sh.itjust.works
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              13 days ago

              I was jogging once, young deerflies were following me, landing on my head constantly, forgot a hat. For like 4 miles, just constant, until I passed a pond, and the dragonflies came out, zipped around me, no more flies.

              They are really cool, unfortunately, their whatchacallit, life in the water, they target tadpoles too, which themselves are the greatest destroyer of parasitic insect larvae. They are malicious looking too, they’ve a spear of sorts they impale their victims on. Cool to watch if a bit macabre.

                • teyrnon@sh.itjust.works
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                  13 days ago

                  They don’t follow their prey, they anticipate their movements, which is singular as far as we know. Their flying ability is second to none, and their vision incredible, they’ve way more eyes than flies and the like which have hundreds, I forget.

                  Their sex is weird, they join and fuck in the air. A male that finds a female already fucked will grab her, it has a scoop it uses to remove the semen of the previous male, and then mates, in the air, can’t recall the name for it at the moment.

                  • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
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                    13 days ago

                    Wow, they know how to live a wild and crazy life! I know they can play dead if they don’t want to mate.