Eagle hoax part two

[urbpan]

So, @TweetsOfOld just posted this link. The highlighted news story, from a 1906 Kentucky newspaper, reads in its entirety: "A four-year-old boy was playing in front of his parents hut at Varallo, Italy, when an eagle suddenly swooped down and carried him off. The eagle was seen to alight on the summit of a high mountain some miles away with his burden safely in his beak. No trace of boy or eagle has been discovered since, although fully 100 mountanineers (sic) spent three weeks continuously searching on the mountains."

This story was either made up completely by the newspaper, a la the Weekly World News, or was spun by the grieving but guilty parents of a child whose death was caused by negligence or malice. The tiniest four year old could not be lifted by the most powerful of european eagles (the golden, again), and eagles don't carry large prey animals with their relatively weak mouths.

Once I asked an ornithologist, "besides mute swans, what flying birds could possibly kill a human being?" She thought for a moment and said "a harpy eagle could kill a small human." Harpy eagles prey on monkeys and sloths, so a four year old is in the right size range for that. They don't pluck the animals from the trees and fly away with them to eat them in their aerie like a roc, however. (oh, wait, yes they do.)

The eagle snatches child video was all too reminiscent of the eagle snatches dog urban legend--another clue to it's doubtfulness.

I don't want to come off as smug--I was totally taken by the eagle video at first. The student filmmakers did a good job of shaking the camera in horror, animating a plausible-appearing grab by the bird, and so on. What this really makes me think about is how valuable it is to actually experience something first hand. Technology can make anything look real--you can synthesize a virtual dragon, dinosaur, faerie, troll, god, alien, or trip to the sun. Why should a child who can watch a perfect artificial dragon bother going to a zoo (for example) to see an anteater or (perish forbid) out into the wilderness to see a moose?

Comments

[kryptyd.livejournal.com]

Dude, I'm smug, I know eagle hate and I've see it before

[didotwite]

like.

[miz-geek.livejournal.com]

When we had a great blue heron at the Ohio Wildlife Center, they had us wear a big plastic face shield. Word was, herons go for the eyes, and they can be deadly. I don't know if that's true or not. I also recently heard a story about a great horned owl leaving a skunk on someone's roof. On the one hand, skunks are pretty big -I'm impressed that a gho got one. (although apparently that's pretyy common). On the other hand, the skunk was so heavy the owl left it on a roof.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

A well-placed heron or crane stab could surely go through the eye and kill you. Haven't read that it's happened (though eyes have been lost).

I love that GHOs prey on skunks. That's one animal killing another three times its mass. As I understand it the killing is done on the ground with the talons.

[shellynoir.livejournal.com]

I've heard GHOs will make little fists with their feet and fly at you and punch you in the head. You could conceivably get knocked unconscious and die of hypothermia.

I've also heard about eagles trying to knock baby mountain goats so they fall and die of their injuries. Every Nat'l Park I've worked in, people walk backwards taking pictures and fall to their deaths, so they could kill you just by posing and preening.

[didotwite]

i get your last point - it's really hard to see a live kill on safari, for example, so i benefit from nature on teevee even though i'm like "i've been there, there, there" (and i'm a lucky person, i know that).

but it was dang cool to be in that atmosphere, that arena, the natural environment. to get in the water with sharks 2 feet from me through MY cage. to see a lion yawn and be like "ohhhhh that's NOT a kitteh" and hope our open-sided vehicle would move on because we were 10 feet away.

now i know that i should have worried about DEATH FROM ABOVE :)

[lyosha.livejournal.com]

Actually, there has been a documented case of a great-horned killing a grown man. Many raptors are capable of killing a human, if they hit in the throat and bind, in terms of sheer power. The likelihood of this happening based on behaviour is slim to none, of course, but in terms of theoretical possibility and biological capability, it's valid. It is much less a question of 'can a flying bird kill a human' and more 'would a flying bird ever choose to target a human as prey', to which the answer is 'not bloody likely except in very specific circumstances that are not likely to ever happen'.

[by-steph.livejournal.com]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8350393/Takeaway-meal-golden-eagle-snatches-lamb-from-hillside.html