An Israeli scientist is calling for Saudi Arabia to return a tagged vulture that Saudi officials reportedly arrested this week on suspicion of being a Mossad spy.
Haaretz reported this week that “residents and local reporters told Saudi Arabia’s Al-Weeam newspaper that the matter seemed to be a ‘Zionist plot,'” after the bird was picked up wearing a transmitter labeled “Tel Aviv University.”
Here’s video from the UK’s Telegraph of avian ecologist Ohad Hatzofe, who says the bird was only tagged with a GPS tracker. But even though it was tagged by Israeli scientists, he said, it might not even be an Israeli vulture: “This bird didn’t stay in Israel in the breeding season, so it might be a Turkish bird, it might be a Jordanian bird, or even be Saudi Arabian.”
