How can gangs of tiny mice take out an albatross 300 times their (individual) weight? I guess it helps that the bird just kind of sits there:
The scientists describe a brutal attack to illustrate the finding that chicks didn’t seem to fight against the attackers. “No chicks displayed appropriate behavioral responses to attacks, even though mice had eaten through the body wall of one filmed albatross chick and were consuming the contents of the chick’s abdominal cavity,†they write in a report of the research published in the journal Biology Letters.
By late September 2004, 100 of the 256 monitored albatross chicks had died. Before the mouse attacks, all the chicks were apparently healthy, suggesting the rodent thugs didn’t target weak or sick individuals.
Warning: the video may be a little disturbing for bird-lovers. (That was quick. Now it appears that the video is gone.)
Not responding to being devoured would be what I would call a significant evolutionary maladaptation. These birds need to get serious about self-defense.