I suspect PSXer’s confusion was with bird raptors and Jurassic Park 'raptors (ie, velociraptors).
Wedge tailed eagles, the Australian form of the Golden Eagle complex, are well documented to prey on healthy wallabies and young kangaroos, anything up to 25 kg in weight. They are quite capable of killing these animals at a full run. There are also numerous credible anecdotes of these eagles killing adult animals up to 50 kg in weight.
So eagles certainly can easily kill bipeds in the size range of a child, and probably in the size range of an adult woman. Of course the human skull is considerably more robust than a macropod skull, so the techniques may not work on people. But an account of a large eagle preying on a human is not completely incredible.
It’s worth noting that eagles have never been recorded as trying to attack adult humans, probably for the same reasons that animals such as bears are never recorded as preying on adult humans despite being physically capable of doing so.
‘Preying on’ and ‘mauling’ are different behaviors, then. (Just making sure you accept the idea that bears attack, damage, and sometimes kill human beings.)
In any event, what are those reasons? We’re made of meat just like an elk, after all.
There’s no doubt about that. Deer also attack, damage and sometimes kill humans. That doesn’t mean they have any intention of chowing down after it’s all over. Bears, with the exception of polar bears, attack humans for defensive reasons, not predatory.
Firstly, we are really bad animals to fuck with. Worse than porcupines. Any animals that attacked a human for 99.9% of our history would have almost certainly ended up being severely wounded. Even if the attack is successful, having a bone knife embedded int he body is not conducive to long-term survival. I doubt it would be possible for any animal to attack an armed human and not suffer a life-threatening injury. And we live in tight-knit groups, so any attacks on children and unarmed individuals are highly likely to provoke group retaliation.
Those strong social bonds combined with a good memory, extensive lifespans and predatory skill also means that retaliation is extreme. Any animal that kills one of my family is dead, and every member of that species that I can find for the next 40 years is also dead. There’s a fair chance that i will pass on that prejudice to my kids, so any animals of that species in this area are going to die for the next 100 years or so.
Not only did any individuals that did prey on humans die, but because genetic distance correlates with physical distance, all their genes also became extinct in just one generation. That’s an incredibly strong selective pressure for animals not to consider humans as prey.
And as usual the Family Circus has already covered this
What with? A piece of string??
One holding onto a foot, the other onto a hand?
Oh yeah? How do they agree that then? I mean, is there an eagle rule that says the left-hand eagle always grabs a hand (so to speak) and the right-hand eagle..? Or do they hold a meeting before the swoop? How do they vote? Is a third eagle called in as a referee?
What if one eagle is a vegetarian but feels an avian obligation to help out?
There are Central Asian guys who use trained eagles to hunt foxes and wolves. I’ve seen a vid where such a golden eagle takes on a fleeing wolf, aiming for the head with it’s talons and gripping down like a vise. A wolf head is at least as robust as an adult human male head covered by a leather cap. According to some old books I can’t find now, the CA eagle owners occasionally get killed by their own birds. Having two golden eagle feet making fists on your face mess you up real bad, real fast. A large, experienced raptor can kill a grown man easily, I think. It may take the messed up brain of a semi-wild animal to pull it off, mentally, though.
I just don’t see it. Unlike deer or foxes we have arms and have that we can actively use in our defense, and even the dumbest guy can get behind a tree.
Even if you wer in the open, if you can see the eagle and swat at it when it came, I doubt the bird would return for a second roundun unless you were threatening a nest.
This is the reason I think we don’t have cases of eagles actually hunting down humans (although there are very few trees where the eagle typically hunt, precisely because they offer protection to men and beast alike). The scenario I gave above features a semi-tame eagle perched on the arm of the hunter. Now, if the bird suddenly decides to jump on your face and clamp down, there’s little you can do before experiencing excruciating pain, heavy bleeding, loss of sight etc. Kind of like a gator wrangler sticking his head inside a gator mouth, then having it snap its jaws shut. Not exactly a realistic prey-predator interaction.
Sorry, no credit without a mention that you got the reference.
Do you have something to substantiate this. Because I have seen dog skulls, and I’ve seen human skulls, and I’m not buying it. Human skulls are more akin to sheep or deer skulls than the light skull of a wolf.
Easily is overstating it. Clearly they can’t easily kill large macropods, which is why is why such kills have never been verified. They almost certainly are capable of such kills, but they clearly don’t find it easy, instead it is an act of last resort.
I think you are missing two important points.
Firstly the question was whether it could be done, not whether it would always work.
Secondly, I think you have overestimated how easy it is to see an eagle stooping. If getting behind a tree was such an effective defence, why do you think that no other prey species on the entire planet has managed to evolve such a simple action?
The simple fact is that eagles have evolved to counter such simple defences.
I’ve spent the vast majority of my life living and working in rural areas, and pretty much the only time you see eagles is when they are at a kill, at the nest or gaining height. The rest of the time they cruise at high altitude where they can not easily be seen. I have often watched eagles riding thermals to heights where they literally become invisible. Indeed, on the rare occasions when you do see eagles away from a kill, they are almost invariably rising. You don’t really see hunting eagles. When they do stoop on their prey, it is fast and usually silent, it also comes from behind.
Is the vast majority of species that are regularly preyed upon by eagles haven’t evolved any mechanism to allow them to see it coming, that should be evidence enough that it’s not easily done.
Nope.
Over the majority of the area where wedgetail eagles hunt, the tree density is very high. It’s mostly savanna woodland, with densities higher than that found in most temperate forests. Indeed, the major limitation in the distribution of the wedgetail is a lack of nesting trees. Naturally they occur anywhere on the continent where there are trees, the only areas they are naturally absent from treeless areas.
The presence of a dense canopy is a hinderance to eagles. The mere presence of trees seems to have no effect at all. What that tells us is that getting behind a tree really isn’t an effective defence. If it were obviously prey animals would use it.
The ostrich and emu have no problem killing a person.
Nor do killer whales.
What exactly is your point?
How do you tell which side of the tree is “behind”?
Tris
To be honest, I first thought of the F-22 Raptor (named presumably for the birds of prey, and not the dinosaurs, though I don’t put it past either Lockheed Martin or the Air Force to name a plane based on their love of Jurassic Park, given that the F-16 got its popular nickname from Battlestar Galactica).
I assume the reasoning is that you “simply” place the tree between yourself and the eagle.
So, class.
A stooping eagle travels at 170km/hr. Our sharp-eyed friend manages to see the eagle from 250m away, an impressive feat in itself. If the nearest tree is just 50 metres away…
How fast does he need to accelerate from standing start to make it to the nearest tree before being hit?
Answer: about the same speed as an Olympic qualifying time.