Hub of the Universe, baby: Brit tourist videos one of our seagulls swallowing a rat whole

By adamg on Thu, 02/28/2019 - 10:34am

Never mind the Goat, we've got the Seagull - and a British tourist was there to record it all on Salem Street in the North End - and provide appropriately horrified commentary, because nothing like this ever happens in jolly old England.

Via Megan Johnson.

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Comments

Take that, New York!

By Scratchie
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 11:02am

You may have Pizza Rat but Boston has Rat Seagull! World class, baby!!

Also, the street looks more like Beacon Hill than the North End IMO. Can't ID it but there's a store's sign visible at the end of the video that may provide a clue.

Salem St.

By NE2002
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 11:09am

It's Salem St., just past Old North Church. Giving as many tourists as possible the authentic Boston experience!

USA! USA!

By anon
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 11:03am

USA! USA!

I'm more shocked

By Anon
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 11:04am

I'm more shocked that it could fly off after eating something 1/3 its body weight.

no kidding!

By Lisfnord
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 11:28am

Now I want to know if he managed to digest it, or if he wound up puking it back up. I guess we'll never know.

Seagulls have a few tricks up their sleeves

By anon
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 8:16pm

The Wikipedia article for gulls interestingly enough talks about gulls eating mice and says that gulls have a particular behavior for swallowing mice: they eat it, travel over to some water and then regurgitate it and get it wet so it's easier to swallow. I'm skeptical enough of that to note that they don't actually have a citation on that paragraph, although it's not something that was just recently added to the article either. But what's easy to find citations for is that seagulls are relatively intelligent animals who can do various tricks to eat food you wouldn't expect a bird to be able to eat like cracking open shells by dropping them, (and of course they also can regurgitate food) so it'll probably try to find a way to swallow it.

I was thinking something like

By Christian O'Brien
Fri, 03/01/2019 - 3:22pm

I was thinking something like this was its plan. It doesn't have the talons that a raptor has to grab food and carry it off, so I surmised it swallowed the thing whole to carry it off somewhere more secluded than the middle of the street, and eat it at its leisure.

Salem St.

By TJ Mack
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 11:06am

Between Hull and Charter

Salem St.

By anon
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 11:10am

The Daily Mail said this was on Salem St.

Sigh

By adamg
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 11:13am

I always have problems when I read Daily Mail articles. I see words, and they look to be in English, but their page design makes my head hurt.

I will never think the same

By anon
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 11:15am

I will never think the same about seagulls again.

I am jealous of its digestion

By Kapil
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 11:28am

That seagull digests the bones and innards like it's no big deal. Most humans would die trying this. We are so poorly adapted to live outside the modern world. That's what happens when a species cooks its food for several thousand years.

I was going to suggest that

By R Hookup
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 11:50am

I was going to suggest that this meal would end up regurgitated for the gull chicks, but I think it's probably the wrong time of the year for them to have nestlings.

That gull might be dead

By Stevil
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 12:20pm

Just ate lunch - so didn't watch the video - but assuming the gull didn't kill the rat - just found it dead and scavenged it. If the rat had been poisoned - that gull might have met the same fate.

Exactly. That was my first

By guest
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 1:11pm

Exactly. That was my first thought.

Poisoned mice and rats run outside to look for water, they know they are dying

Go to Tufts in North Grafton or New England Wildlife center in Weymouth for more information.

Many owls and other birds of prey are poisoned this way, snakes too.

Might be a pick and drop

By anon
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 2:14pm

Head out along the wharves at low tide. The seagulls pick shellfish off of the pilings and drop it on the concrete. Or just walk out along Long Wharf and note the broken shells and splats.

I wonder if the guy started filming when the rat dropped from the sky.

Yeah, we need to push back

By anon
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 2:23pm

Yeah, we need to push back against the indiscriminate use of D-Con poison "bait stations". Poisoned rats are going to kill of the birds of prey that are supposed to keep the rat population down, and probably a few pets as well.

Rats of the sky

By downtown-anon
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 3:13pm

I think seagulls earn the name rats of the sky because of their willingness to eat just about anything.

You are what you eat...

By Stevil
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 4:59pm

N/T

I had the same thought

By Deedle
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 9:31pm

The video starts with the gull and dead rat in the middle of the street. If the gull was lucky, the rat was just roadkill, and not poisoned first.

on the other hand

By surprisefries
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 8:13pm

We wouldn't be where we are today had we not learned to cook food. It dramatically increases the nutrient gain, allowing our ancestors to spend way less time foraging.

Way less time foraging or

By notreallyfromboston
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 11:27pm

Way less time foraging or swallow rats whole? You snowflake.

It's true, we are so not

By surprisefries
Fri, 03/01/2019 - 8:52am

It's true, we are so not badass as a species.

Hey

By SamWack
Fri, 03/01/2019 - 10:42am

Not only can we cook rats, we are currently cooking the entire planet. That's pretty badass.

Yup, that's the problem. We can't swallow rats whole.

By notreallyfromboston
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 11:26pm

CURSE YOU, PROMETHEUS!!!

If that was shocking, then

By brianjdamico
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 11:25am

If that was shocking, then they shouldn't look in any of the restaurants nearby. They will find an awful lot of humans eating other animals.

Neither shocking nor surprising

By anon
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 11:40am

Just totally freaking epic!

Like raccoons, seagulls have some mad skills when the garbage runs low.

Hmmm

By fungwah
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 12:06pm

I've never seen any human swallow anything that big in one gulp without chewing, but I guess if you're commonly seeing that you may have grown up with different table manners than I'm used to.