Skull Island: A Documentation of the Most Terrifying Place on Earth

by SomethingWittyIGuess

In the summer of 1889, a British Naval ship sails from India to Australia, however a tropical storm causes it to wash up on a lost island in the Indian Ocean. The crew dubs the landmass Skull Island and they take note of the odd and even deadly fauna and flora that call this place home. Since then, several expeditions were made to explore this land and what lived there.

59. The Undertaker Cockatoo

The Undertaker Cockatoo (Cacatua sarcophagus)

Among the many roles animals may play in their ecosystems, scavengers are one of the most important. By feeding on the leftover remains of deceased animals, scavengers ensure that no amount of organic material goes to waste as well as preventing diseases and other pathogens from spreading throughout the environment. Though most carnivores often take up scavenging behavior, there are some whose entire food intake comes almost entirely from corpses, such as vultures, hagfish, and piranhas. Though the moniker of being a full-time scavenger isn't entirely accurate when describing this animal, its role as a natural cleanup crew for Skull Island is very important; this is the Undertaker Cockatoo (Cacatua sarcophagus).

The gruesome-sounding common name of this relatively abundant, white-plumed bird comes from its unique behavior of feeding on carrion. Like other parrots, it has a strong beak, which, in this animal, allows it to crush fine bone to get the marrow inside. Once believed to be a dedicated scavenger like a vulture, further studies show that (like most parrots) it is actually an omnivore, with fruits, seeds, insects, and small vertebrates making up the rest of its diet. Due to this, many compare the feeding behaviors of this animal to corvids, which are also primarily omnivorous birds that play a major role as scavengers in their habitats.

Cockatoos are a fairly common sight across Australasia, with many islands sometimes housing species that are endemic to that region. Skull Island has its fair share of cockatoos, but most are confined to Tiger Island due to competition with other birds. This may be the reason why the Undertaker Cockatoo took up a much more generalized diet; to avoid competition with birds that also feed mostly on seeds and hard-shelled fruits. The current hypothesis regarding this creature's evolution is that ancestral cockatoos took to feeding on carrion in order to obtain mineral supplements to their diet. Over time, their beaks began to get stronger, gaining the ability to crack open small bones to obtain the nutritious marrow inside. This powerful bone-crushing bill also made feeding on hardy vegetation easier, with this species even being observed feeding on tree bark and the insect larvae that resided in it.

Author's Note: the Undertaker Cockatoo is based on the Carrion Parrot of The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island. The main difference however is that, unlike the creature in the book which is a dedicated scavenger, the cockatoo is a generalist, with carrion making up a large portion of their diet, but that's not all it feeds on.