On Wed, May 23rd, 2012 at 12:26 PM, Augusto Haro<augustoharo@gmail.com> wrote:
I knew a hen which in one occassion preyed upon a juvenile crotalid
snake (Bothrops), not mattering the latter being venomous.
My mother's hand-raised chickens love to hunt and kill field mice, then play a
game with the
carcass until it falls to pieces (whoever can keep possession of it for the
longest seems to win). If a
mouse is spotted by one of the chickens, then it quite enthusiastically hunts
it down and quickly kills
it. They don't eat the mice though - I suspect they're too well fed, killing
the mice for fun much like
an equally well-fed cat would.
Any new chickens introduced to the group quickly learn the game, and become
proficient rodent
hunters themselves. It's like watching a bunch of rotund velociraptors at work.
Chickens are opportunistic omnivores, so I suspect they'll make the most of any
resource
available. That may just happen to be termites in some regions.