TAKE THAT YOU NASTY SNAKE

It's Silly Saturday and we're at the zoo in Milwaukee.  As part of the Raptory Theater Experience, several trained birds are shown to the assemblage of visitors. 
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This is a Secretary Bird (Sagittarius serpentarius), a native to the grasslands and savanna of sub-Saharan Africa.  It's a big bird of the raptor group although it is mostly terrestrial.  It can stand 4 feet tall (1.3m).
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WIKI:  Unlike most birds of prey, the secretarybird is largely terrestrial, hunting its prey on foot. Adults hunt in pairs and sometimes as loose familial flocks, stalking through the habitat with long strides.[39] Prey may consist of insects such as locusts, other grasshoppers, wasps, and beetles, but small vertebrates often form main biomass. Secretarybirds are known to hunt rodents, frogs, lizards, small tortoises, and birds such as warblers, larks, doves, small hornbills, and domestic chickens. They occasionally prey on larger mammals such as hedgehogs, mongooses, small felids such as cheetah cubs, striped polecats, young gazelles, and both young and full-grown hares.[28][26][39][40][41] The importance of snakes in the diet has been exaggerated in the past, although they can be locally important, and venomous species such as adders and cobras are regularly among the types of snakes preyed upon. Secretarybirds do not eat carrion, though they occasionally eat dead animals killed in grass or bushfires. [25][42]
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It got its name from a series of long feathers sticking out of its head much like pencils sticking out of a secretary's hairdo in times past.  This one is demonstrating its natural ability to kill snakes....it pecks at their heads and then grabs them and smashes them against the ground until they are dead.  Then they are eaten.  
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Unfortunately, this is a rubber snake and inedible.  Doesn't bother this bird....if you look at how much head space is taken up by eyeballs, there isn't a lot of room left over for brains. But he killed this rubber snake nonetheless.  Now, isn't that rather silly?
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