Some of nature's creepiest creatures do not need a costume. Some act shoe-ins for leading roles in haunted houses or scary movies. From beetles who bury the dead, to birds who impale their prey, wildlife is full of spooky, Halloween-level behavior.
Before you scream, gag or click away, peek out from under the covers and meet some of the animals perpetuating these dastardly deeds and discover why even the smallest, and creepiest monsters deserve our admiration and protection.
Loggerhead Shrike
Looks can be deceiving, especially around Halloween. The loggerhead shrike might look like a sweet little songbird, but this feathered creature has earned itself a much more sinister nickname: the butcher bird.
Shrikes have a particularly gruesome way of preparing dinner: they impale their prey on thorns, barbed wire or just about anything sharp they can find. The butcher bird’s favorite meals come in the form of insects, lizards, mice or even other birds.
Not a true bird of prey?
Unlike true birds of prey, shrikes lack the strong talons needed to hold down larger prey. Instead, they use sharp objects to anchor their victims. Talk about a killer dinner party.
One subspecies of loggerhead shrike, the San Clemente loggerhead shrike, is federally endangered.
Shrikes are an indicator species: when something’s wrong with their habitat or food source, their decline is often an early warning of bigger environmental problems to come.
Even nature’s cutest butcher needs protection.
The Eastern Indigo Snake
The Eastern indigo snake’s long body – the longest in North America at more than eight feet in length – may seem intimidating. But their eerie, iridescent blue-back color is a thing of beauty as it shimmers in the sunlight.
What really makes these snakes creepy is their unnerving approach to dealing with unwanted and dangerous neighbors: they eat them.
Eastern Indigo snakes regularly hunt and swallow other venomous snakes whole who slither into their habitat, including rattlesnakes and cottonmouths. Their resistance to venom means they get a tasty treat that most other wildlife would avoid.
Do not let their fearsome menu fool you, however. Eastern indigos are generally shy and nonaggressive towards humans. So, while these snakes help keep other snake populations in check, they are not necessarily looking for trouble.
While the eastern indigo snake helps protect humans from some of nature’s most dangerous predators, it needs a little protection of its own.
The eastern indigo snake is federally threatened, and their survival is closely linked to another vulnerable species, the gopher tortoise. Indigo snakes rely on tortoise burrows for shelter and refuge from extreme weather.
While the snake may be the venom slayer, it cannot survive without a safe place to hide.
American Burying Beetle
The name may give this insect’s creepy act away: the American Burying Beetle is North America's largest carrion beetle. Nicknamed the "gravedigger," mated pairs of burying beetles work together to find small dead animals, bury the whole carcass underground, strip its fur or feathers and roll the carcass into a ball to feed their larvae.
This meal prep is an unusual level of parental care for insects. Beetles eat their dinner underground in the nursery to keep the carcass hidden from other competing scavengers.
Creepy aside, this beetle is a natural recycler — burying and consuming animals in its path returns vital nutrients to the soil.
This little recycler is, unfortunately, federally endangered. They have disappeared from much of their native range due to habitat loss on the grasslands.
The Black-Footed Ferret
Beady little eyes glowing in the dim light of your flashlight at night might not be those of a monster. But they could be those of a very sneaky black-footed ferret hunting its roommates.
With their dark facial markings, often called a bandit mask, these ferrets could be perceived as quite the villain amongst other small animals of the Great Plains. These predators spend much of their lives underground in prairie dog burrows, slinking out after dark to hunt. Their prey of choice? Prairie dogs. Loads of them. A single black footed ferret can consume around 100 prairie dogs a year. That is a lot of late-night snacking.
This midnight menace has a surprisingly happy story. Once thought to be extinct in the wild, the black-footed ferret has become one of North America's greatest wildlife conservation comeback stories thanks to dedicated recovery efforts. Defenders of Wildlife is an official partner of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) recovery team, working to ensure these little bandits can continue to haunt the prairies for generations to come.
Turkey Vulture
With its recognizable bald, blood-red head and habit of circling over the dead, vultures look like they flew straight out of a horror movie. If their looks aren't enough to give you the heebie jeebies, this creature has a very bizarre way of protecting itself.
Turkey vultures projectile vomit a mix of stomach acid and half-digested meat up to 10 feet at predators as a defense mechanism. A smelly, yet surprisingly effective defense; these birds depend on their bile to keep other threatening creatures away.
As gross as the mixture may sound, it is strong enough to kill the bacteria behind both anthrax and rabies, which is exactly what makes this bird so spooky and so special. By cleaning up carcasses before disease can spread, turkey vultures act as nature’s own disease control.
Unlike our other spooky critters in this blog, turkey vultures are not threatened. They are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
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