Foxes

[gozzer]

Foxes do kill more than they can immediately eat, but usually bury the rest for later. They'll eat stuff long past it's 'use by date'. (Their access to cold storage is seasonal),
It's pretty common in nature. Magpies do it, squirrels do it, dogs bury bones, and humans panic buy more than they need, at the least suggestion of a shortage.
It's called 'The survival instinct'.

John.

[Steve Walker]

I think Chesters has it right. Fox strategy works if it comes across a gaggle of goslings out in the open, but not so efficient where it can't come back to sneak the kill away.

[Dave H]

Foxes kill not for fun. Only we do that. The fox will wipe out the whole coup so it can return later to pick up the rest. I have seen this spending all my life on or off in the countryside. But barely get the chance to get back because of the noise originally given off

 

There is though in my view a 50/50% chance that magpies do from experiences over the years

Edited March 15, 2013 by Dave H

[Clifftop]

I'll propose a hypothesis, but I am not bold enough to claim that it is a theory.

 

They'll only do that in a domestic situation, in the wild a fox is lucky if he get's one. Also when you say that they "kill for the sake of it" you are making an anthropomorphization.

 

When Brown Bears are feeding on sallmon running up a river, they seldom eat all of the fish, they don't have time. They have to pile on the fat in order to survive hibernation so they only eat the bits of the fish that have most fat and leave the rest.

 

If you ever get the chance, go and visit the hydro electricity plant in Pitlochry when the salmon are running, You can go to the visitor centre and watch the salmon running up the fish ladder. You often see a salmon with a big chunk taken out, just behind the gills. I've been told that seals do this, I don't know if that is true or not.

Me and my lad were fishing a salmon beach and a seal was chasing a school up and down the reef,

we saw salmon with big bites out of the belly wash up and we put it down to the seal.

Magpies will bury food and come back later as i've seen for myself.

[gozzer]

Magpies will bury food and come back later as i've seen for myself.

I've watched them in my garden Fred. They will eat their fill and then keep returning to take more, only to bury it. I've even watched them pushing it through small gaps in roof tiles. It's funny to see them come back, and not remember exactly where they've put it, just the general area. They poke around everywhere until they find it. On the roof they walk up and down trying every likely looking place, then struggle to get it out when they do find it!

 

John.

Edited March 15, 2013 by gozzer

[Dave H]

Me and my lad were fishing a salmon beach and a seal was chasing a school up and down the reef,

we saw salmon with big bites out of the belly wash up and we put it down to the seal.

Magpies will bury food and come back later as i've seen for myself.

 

 

I have seen thousands of magpies in my time and on a few occasions seen them attack a bird peck its eyes out in general and just leave it and fly off. This maybe as it’s protecting its nest nearbye but I never see a nest near bye and after 30 years am quite convinced (I say ‘Quite’) do kill for the sake of killing. The most intelligent bird in the animal kingdom is the crow/mag/Raven etc family.

They really are quite bright and although that sounds stupid to do that act are they then not like us enjoy killing? I don’t know but I can give you lots of stories that would make you think about it.

On u-Tube put in ‘Australian Magpies’. You will see them attacking people in the park on bikes you name it. In general I think it’s the mating season but if they could kill you they would.

[Worms]

As has already been said, foxes don't kill for fun...They kill what's available and return (if possible) to remove and cache the excess for leaner times. An evolutionary perfect design for an animal really. It can have fresh food and, if prey becomes scarce it can revert to the cached food to survive.

 

I suspect that the myth that foxes are like Humans (kill for fun) came about is because Farmer Giles shot Charlie Fox on the return visit to take more carcasses away no doubt thinking he'd come back to gloat!

 

And talking of killing for fun....it never ceases to amaze me how many people shoot foxes. In my neck of the woods one would think that there couldn't possibly be any left as almost everybody with an FAC shoots them...and many illegally, on the vermin clause, whereas they actually need them put down specifically on their FAC as foxes are not classed as vermin in the UK. Odd really, all of these farmers worried about their potatoes, cattle and oil seed rape being predated by wanton killers such as foxes...that are removing their rodent pests...Oops, silly me I forgot, foxes eat pheasants...another native predator being killed by Man because it eats non-native birds bred so Man can kill for fun!

[chesters1]

We once watched a very enterprising magpie sitting up a sweet chestnut tree watching a squirrel burying the chestnuts ,when the squirrel finished it popped down and removed the nut and carted it off somewhere.

Theres a flock of 20 black and white hooligans here and about 40 jackdaws .

The jackdaws are fine but the magpies out and out thugs ,if theyre not pulling the felt of the sheds we had them on camera footage deliberately making holes in our tent roof.

We have actually seen them kill a rabbit but it was pinched by a dog before we saw what they were going to do with it but i have no doubt it would have been eaten as they pounced on the cows prolapse whenever it laid down so they enjoyed a bit of red meat

We used to have a tame jackdaw when the kids were at school ,it used to get on the bus occasionally (when it wasnt causing havoc anywhere else) with the kids and fly home later ,one day it disapeared so we guess it got the wrong bus

When i catch mice in the traps i chuck the corpse in the field it doesnt take long until a magpie grabs it

Edited March 15, 2013 by chesters1

[Old geezer]

I understand that foxes actually kill what they can and then bury the carcass's to eat later. The times when you see all the bodies is the time when they have been disturbed and forced to leave before they could bury them

[corydoras]

I am amazed at how people an

 

The most intelligent bird in the animal kingdom is the crow/mag/Raven etc family.

How do you know this? What other bird species have you compare them against? Are members of the crow family more intelligent than members of the parrot family?