Check out this sweet little fella:
Cute right?
What if I told ya it's actually one vicious little mother fucker! They say don't judge a book by its cover and this couldn't be any truer for this creature!
This bird is commonly known as the Great grey shrike and it occurs in Eurasia and northern Africa.
But it's the animal's scientific name, Lanius excubitor, that gives us some actual insight about the animal's darker nature, as it literally translates to sentinel butcher!
But why such a vicious name? Well... They literally impale their prey on sharp objects like thorn or barbed wire before eating it 😱😱😱😱
Lanius is the Latin term for a butcher, while excubitor is Latin for a watchman or sentinel.
This refers to the birds' two most conspicuous behaviours – storing food animals by impaling them on thorns, and using exposed tree-tops or poles to watch the surrounding area for possible prey. source
Here's a short video showing this exact behavior
Their prey is small vertebrates and large invertebrates, like frogs, toads, rats, mice, snakes,lizards and insects but they will occasionally even catch small birds! They are actually known to mimic songbirds to lure them into striking distance! They have also been reported to consume bats, newts, salamanders and small fish.
I guess anything goes in the menu as long as it's small enough for them to catch and impale it. Good thing they are small...
Imagine if they had the size of the eagle, they'd probably even catch human babies and impale them before eating them 😅
Here's a longer video, this time from Natgeo, about the bird
Ok, hope you enjoyed reading about this horrifying little fucker. Feel free to visit Wikipedia which covers pretty much anything about them if you want to learn more!