The Golden Eagle: "CEO of the ROC" (in the Sinbad sense, though)
âRoll back the rock to the dawn of time â when the Earth was smokinâ and the lava flowed.â
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Rex, Weâre Back.1
So, despite that being a wildly inaccurate portrayal of the Mesozoic climate, itâs one of my favorite songs and has been since I was like three. Whatever. Point is, Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) are super rough, and theyâre singlehandedly (talonedly?) reminding everyone that birds are just dinosaur horcruxes, and that the mammals-who-lived better stay on their artio/perissodactyl toes.
Yeah. That is what happens.
Golden eagles have long been known for taking large mammals as prey. Besides absconding with foxes, raccoons, bobcats, domestic cats2 and gorram REINDEER3 (also making an attempt on a young human in that one youtube video from a while back)4, theyâve been known to hurl bighorn sheep off the ledges they climb, then meander slowly down for an easy meal of bighorn sheep pulp5.
One Golden Eagle, an interwebs celebrity as of September 2013) apparently decided to show us what it takes to run things on earth for 210 million years. He or she was recently captured on film taking out a sika deer6 (note, this is a fairly large mammal, which can weigh up to 240 lbs in some populations)7.
The eagle likely accomplished that by crushing the deerâs spine or causing internal bleeding with talons that have fifteen times the grip strength of a human hand6.
I assume grip strength is measured in a unit called âStathams.â
The most intense part? This method of hunting (latching onto the back and flapping to stay upright while making the kill) is now suspected to be the origin of flapping behavior in general. It's how we think Deinonychus and other dromeosaurids (basically bigger versions of Velociraptor, which was actually about the size of a fox) hunted, way back when8.
So the next time a little kid asks you what happened to the dinosaurs, donât tell him or her theyâre extinct. Tell the truth: theyâre waiting. In the sky. Watching you.
By the way, I donât have any rights to any of these images, and donât claim to. So please donât sue me.
 Weâre Back! A Dinosaurâs Story (1993)
 Olendorff RR (1976) The food habits of North American golden eagles. American Midland Naturalist, 95:231-236
 Nybakk K, Kjelvik O, Kvam T (1999) Golden eagle predation on semidomestic reindeer. Wildlife Society Bulletin, 27:1038-1042
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9feAQtgX1fw youtube.com âGolden eagle snatches kidâ Uploaded by Mirrorviewvids
 McGahan J (1968) Ecology of the golden eagle. The Auk, 85:1-12
 Kerley LL, Slaight JC (2013) First documented predation of sika deer (Cervus Nippon) by Golden Eagle (Aquila chrystaetos) in Russian Far East. Journal of Raptor Research, 47:328-330
Nowak RM (1991) Walkerâs Mammals of the World. Fifth Edition: Volume 2. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Fowler DW, Freedman EA, Scannella JB, Kambic RE (2011) The Predatory Ecology of Deinonychus and the Origin of Flapping in Birds. PLoS ONE 6(12):doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0028964
