Kidnapping is rare in the animal kingdom, but it does happen. The phenomenon has been observed both within and between species, where it rarely ends well. Most animals held captive either die, or a forced into a life of slavery… and then die. Meet seven of the animal kingdom’s most nefarious kidnappers.
Sea Otters
Let’s start on a relatively positive note, because kidnapping among sea otters is a rare example of a hijack with a happy ending. Although sea otters might look cute when they juggle pebbles, tuck stones in their armpits or lie on their backs and hold paws with each other, don’t be fooled. Male sea otters can be utter rascals.
First, there’s the food that they steal. Males will frequently rob food from females, and this includes pair-bonded males who pilfer from their partners. And then, there’s the pups!
On the Monterey peninsula in California, male sea otters have been observed snatching pups from the surface of the water, when the mother is diving for sea urchins, clams and other delicacies.
This behaviour is motivated by food. When the mother returns, the pup is used as a bargaining chip. When the mum hands over her catch – which she will do because, well, she’s a mum - the baby is safely returned. The hostage situation is de-escalated, and everyone gets on with their day.
Emperor Penguins
Things do not end so well for the emperor penguin chicks that are abducted. It’s not easy raising a young one in the Antarctic winter. Every year, adult emperor penguins trek up to 75 miles across the ice to their remote breeding grounds, where they start their families. Females lay a single egg, which the male incubates for two months, while she returns to the sea to feed. After that, they take turns at child care.
In this harsh environment, mortality rates are high. Up to 90% of chicks die before they reach adulthood. Others become separated from their parents. Driven by high levels of the ‘nurturing hormone’ prolactin, this can cause mothers who have lost their chick to kidnap new ones from nearby nests.
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The behaviour is relatively common. One study found that 9 per cent of youngsters in the Terre Adélie breeding colony were kidnapped, and that most of these weren’t fed. Most adoptions fail within ten days, and most kidnapped chicks die from starvation, freezing or predation.
Baboons
In 2020, visitors to South Africa’s Kruger National Park witnessed one of the most baffling examples of animal kidnapping recorded to date. An adult baboon kidnapped a four-week-old lion cub, then seemed to enjoy spending time with it. The baboon carried the cub around in his arms and carted it up trees, where he could be seen grooming and caressing the mewling feline.
No one knows why the baboon did it. At face value, it’s a foolhardy move, because lions are apex predators that hunt and eat baboons. Baboons, on the other hand, are opportunistic omnivores, that will steal and eat an unattended lion cub, but buddying up with one? It’s a ballsy and bizarre move.
The fate of the lion cub is unknown. The tourists moved on, and the unusual duo were never seen together again. The most likely outcome, however, is bleak. It was already 30 degrees Celsius when the incident was spotted at 8am in the morning. So, the cub probably died from dehydration.
Capuchin Monkeys
Equally bizarre, a group of white-faced capuchin monkeys on the Panamanian island of Jicarón are known to kidnap baby howler monkeys. In 2022, researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour in Germany noticed a young male capuchin carrying a little howler monkey on his back.
The behaviour was caught on remote cameras, so the scientists combed through more footage, and found that eleven howler monkeys had been taken by five sub-adult or juvenile male capuchins over a 15 month period. When the infants called out or tried to escape, the capuchins dragged them back. So, this wasn’t a random act of theft. It was a deliberate act of abduction.
Once again, the motive is unclear. The capuchins didn’t eat or intentionally injure the howler infants, nor did they provide care such as feeding or grooming. Instead, researchers think they were either bored or succumbed to a cultural ‘fad’ that began with the first kidnapping.
And once again, things did not end well for the captives. Researchers spotted at least three dead howler infants being carried around. The rest are also likely to have died, because they were too young to look after themselves.
Eleonora’s Falcon
Eleonora’s falcon is named after the Sardinian judge, Eleanor of Arborea, who in 1392, became the first ruler to pass a law protecting hawk and falcon nests from illegal poaching. If only she knew… Evidence suggests that these small raptors may kidnap, torture and then imprison small birds.
In 2016, ornithologists made a grisly discovery in Morocco’s Mogador archipelago. Several small migratory birds were found trapped in crevices in the rocks close to Eleanora’s falcon nests. Some were missing wing and tail feathers, hinting that the raptors had deliberately mutilated them and then stashed the birds in the tight spaces.
Writing in the journal Alauda, the scientists who described the behaviour suggest this is the falcon equivalent of keeping your pantry stocked with food fresh, but not everyone is convinced. No one has directly witnessed the falcons ‘imprisoning’ the smaller birds, so another scenario is that the migrants escaped their tormentors and then hid in the rocks.
Naked Mole Rats
Naked mole rats are strange, wrinkly beasts that defy convention. They are mammals, but they are cold-blooded, cancer-resistant creatures that defy the ageing process and can survive for up to 20 minutes without oxygen. They also kidnap pups from rival colonies to boost the size of their own.
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Naked mole rats live in massive familial colonies which include a single queen and hundreds of non-reproductive workers. When they run out of food or space, colonies sometimes invade the burrows of their neighbours. In one captive colony in Cape Town, invaders chewed through their Perspex tunnels, travelled along wooden tables, chewed into another colony’s burrow system, captured a litter of nine un-weaned pups and then brought them back to their own nest box.
Researchers returned them, but in Kenya’s Meru National Park, the fate of wild abducted naked mole rats is different. Genetic testing has revealed that some newly expanded colonies here contain unrelated workers. The interpretation is that these individuals had also been kidnapped from a neighbouring colony and then put to work in their new home. This, researchers say, means that “their life effort would be categorized as slavery.”
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Slave-makings ants
Stealing a handful of mole rats is one thing, but some ant species take kidnapping to a whole new level. On the forest floor of California’s Sierra Nevada, red ants (Polyergus mexicanus) launch frenzied raids on the nests of nearby black ants (Formica accreta) and steal hundreds of their pupae.
The pupae are carried back to the red ant nest, and when they hatch, the kidnappers coat them in secretions from specialised glands. This bathes the captives in the scent of the colony, fooling them into thinking they belong. From that moment on, the captives work for the red ants, maintaining their nest, tending their young and foraging for food.
Slave-making ants can’t feed themselves, because their jaws are the wrong shape for foraging or processing food. Not so the captive ants, who feed their kidnappers by regurgitating food into their mouths.
The whole scenario is known as obligate social parasitism. ‘Parasitism’ because one species gains resources at the others expense. ‘Social’ because the whole colony is in on it. And ‘obligate’ because the parasite has no choice. Slave-making ants would be unable to survive without the help of the species they kidnap.
