![]() ![]() This enormous predator then faced a scarcity of food. Moa, an easy source of prey for the eagle, were likewise an easy source of food for Maori tribes people when they began to settle in New Zealand around AD 1200, These settlers quickly drove the moa to extinction, and with it went the primary food supply of the Haast’s eagle. With no other large predators, the Haast’s eagle could afford to take its time with the carcass of its prey until ready to return to the hunt.ĭ This leads to an important question: How did such a ferocious predator fall from the top of the food chain and rapidly become extinct around AD 1500? The answer is that, like many other extinct animals, the Haast’s eagle could not diversify its behaviours and adapt to changing circumstances quickly enough to survive. Once immobilised, a large catch could feed the eagle over several days. This force was enough to bring down very large animals, and indeed the Haast’s eagle preyed primarily on the moa -a clumsy, flightless bird nearly fifteen times its size. With these talons the eagle would attack its prey in the only way it knew how -grasping the animal’s pelvis with one talon while crushing its skull with the other in a strike that, according to New Zealand researcher Richard Holdaway, is akin to that of a 15 kilogram concrete block dropping from an eight-storey building. At almost 23 centimetres in length, these are comparable to those of some wild cats and have justifiably earned the Haast’s eagle the nickname ‘Tiger of the Skies’. ![]() While stubbier wings made the eagle ill-suited to prolonged flight, they did enable the Haast’s eagle to nimbly and swiftly manoeuvre its large frame around trees, which would have been vital for pursuing prey through New Zealand’s dense forest and scrubland.Ĭ The most impressive aspect of the bird’s anatomy, however, was its enormous talons. Although this wingspan is comparatively small (the Wandering Albatross and Andean Condor, for instance, each have wing spans in excess of three metres), the Haast’s eagle possessed a much larger body mass to wing ratio. A rock painting depicting a Haas’s eagle in New Zealand.B The largest known eagle ever documented, this fearsome creature weighed up to fifteen kilograms and sported wings spanning two to three metres in diameter. This combination of strategies also suggests that the species might have undergone rapid evolutionary changes to maximize its resources by being a hunter and a scavenger. But its skull shape, which had strain spots from eating, indicated that once it had taken down its meal, it would rip into it and eat the internal organs like a vulture. They found that the harpagornis’s beak and talons were more eagle-like in nature and able to withstand high amounts of pressure, leading them to believe that it was in fact a predator. They then calculated the amount of pressure that these body parts could bear to learn if the eagle was powerful enough to attack prey, or just strong enough to dig through the flesh of a carcass. The creature’s beak, braincase, and talons were studied using geometric morphometric and finite-element analyses, tools that allowed the team to determine the shape and strength of the bird’s features. A 3D model shows the harpagornis biting down like modern eagles. ![]()
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