pandc0122 t1_iso9fxd wrote on October 17, 2022 at 1:48 PM

Reply to comment by SecretNature in How do fishes get into isolated inland lakes in the first place? and why don't we see more divergent evolution / speciation given the separation of each group of fishes from each other? by I-mean-Literally

I wonder if it’s possible that this behavior is a kind of survival mechanism - spreading food stock to new habitats, increasing the likelihood of good hunting in future seasons.

SecretNature t1_isqd7od wrote on October 17, 2022 at 10:32 PM

It is an interesting thought but for the sake of brevity I did not include all of the details in my post. Every time I have seen this happen it was when an osprey was being chased by a bald eagle. They did not want to drop the fish but they had to in order to use their talons to defend themselves. So, I don’t think it was intentional to drop them in the lake. At another location I have found fish in the middle of a baseball field presumably dropped by osprey as well under similar situations.

pandc0122 t1_it2a0t8 wrote on October 20, 2022 at 12:45 PM

Ah. And to clarify, I don’t think anything about it is “intentional” - more instinctive. In any case, dropping prey in order to escape an eagle is definitely a survival mechanism. 🙂