A video uploaded by Jonathan Davis showing a flock of turkeys seemingly performing a ritualistic dance around a corpse of a dead cat had gone viral over the past few days.
Most of the people who have seen the video were creeped out and thought that the turkeys were performing a "death dance." However, experts noted that there is a logical explanation for their behavior.
Alan Krakauer, a biologist at the University of California Davis, told Fox News that while it may seem rather strange, the turkeys are just keeping an eye on the cat, thinking that it might be a threat to them.
"The circling behavior probably stems from a ‘follow-the-leader movement' behavior that turkeys sometimes use," he explained. "In this case, I think the flock size just happened to be perfect so that the leader of ‘conga line' met up with the tail, and they just kept going round and round!"
Mark Hatfield, a wildlife biologist for the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF), also had the same explanation.
On a blog post, he said turkeys are very basic instinct and they probably thought that the cat is a potential predator so they inspected it.
"It's a non-story from the biological side of things. They've flocked together on instinct upon seeing the potential predator," he said. "They're saying that's a threat, I'm gonna keep my distance and I'm following the flock."
Biologist Alan Krakauer, an expert on the behavioral ecology of birds told National Public Radio that turkeys often take the dangerous route when faced with a potential predator. Instead of fleeing from it right away, they actually approach the predator so they can evaluate how big of a threat it is.
Fortunately, the cat is already dead. But just in case they are faced with a predator that is actually alive, the flock would immediately scatter.
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