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Birds Of Prey Snatching Domestic Animals, Pets Or Children

This just popped up on youtube, after several watches, it looks good enough to pass my "fakey-wakey" spotting senses.

A man filming in a park in Montreal, catches an Eagle trying to make off with a toddler YouTube Video here

If you do want a comedy angle in this, the Toddler is wearing a furry animal hat. So maybe Mr Eagle isn't 100 to blame for this...

Mr P
 
Looks like the real deal to me.

I liked one of the comments:
"This would never work in the United States, it would take 50 of those birds to lif[t] up our babies." 8)

Luckily the Canadian toddler was too heavy for one bird to get any altitude - it could still have been a tragic outcome if he'd been dropped from much higher.
 
:lol: I'm sorry but that is a funny vid!
 
rynner2 said:
Luckily the Canadian toddler was too heavy for one bird to get any altitude - it could still have been a tragic outcome if he'd been dropped from much higher.

I doubt it was the weight. More like the eagle got spooked by all the people coming after it and it had to jettison the weight for a quicker escape. Eagles take lambs and small sheep all the time and I bet this toddler didn't weigh any more.
 
The 'anomalies' cited remind me of some of the arguments used to 'prove' that the moon landings were hoaxed. 8)

Especially the comments about shadows being at different angles, or even disappearing. But clearly the land there is undulating, so that's what you would expect to see. (A shadow could seem to disappear if it passed over the far side of even a shallow hump.)

Even if all the land were dead flat, you'd still see shadows converge (or diverge) because of perspective effects. And these effects are amplified by the low angle of a winter sun.

The video may be hoaxed - a one-off poster is always suspicious - but the arguments given are far from conclusive. I await more sightings of the silly hat the kid was wearing! :D

(BTW, the video looks good when viewed full-screen.)
 
Looks authentic, but what was the reason for Chariots of Fire as the soundtrack? Is it a cryptic clue or the owner's favourite tune?
 
From the second link quoted earlier:

MONTREAL - A Montreal animation and digital design college has admitted that three of its students were responsible for the 'Golden Eagle Snatches Kid' video that went viral on Tuesday.

It's a very good fake - had me going for a minute.
 
Mythopoeika said:
From the second link quoted earlier:

MONTREAL - A Montreal animation and digital design college has admitted that three of its students were responsible for the 'Golden Eagle Snatches Kid' video that went viral on Tuesday.
I can't find that link - gotta URL?
 
Thassit! Thanks, Monstrosa!
 
Well, they had me fooled - but that's not much of a commendation. :lol:
 
When I was in Sweden back in 1988, an eagle had apparently tried to carry off a toddler just a short while earlier. The toddler was too heavy though.
 
Xanatic_ said:
When I was in Sweden back in 1988, an eagle had apparently tried to carry off a toddler just a short while earlier. The toddler was too heavy though.

At least most British and Irish toddlers would likely be to obese to be carried off by anything less than a Roc.
 
I've been told tales of buzzards trying to take babies in the UK. Not sure how true it is mind
 
As one of America's top birders points out, though the video is technically well-done, it's a sloppy as well as an irresponsible piece of work. Not only do golden eagles not carry off children, they are not native to Montreal. Nor do they look like the bird in the video.
http://birdingwithkennandkim.blogspot.com/
All you have to do is look at the bird in the video. A Golden Eagle in Montreal would be a notable rarity, but this bird is not a Golden Eagle at all. The pattern of white in the wings immediately rules that out. The exact identity of the bird is still being studied, but whatever it was—assuming it was a real bird at all, and not entirely computer-generated—it wasn’t anything native to North America.
....
UPDATE: It has just been confirmed that the video was produced for a class assignment by three students at Centre NAD, a school in Montreal. Both the "eagle" and the baby were completely computer-generated. More information at this link:

So no actual children were harmed or threatened in the making of this video. But my final complaint about the video still stands; many people will never see the retraction, and they will be forever rendered a little more suspicious and fearful of the natural world, thus darkening their lives and the lives of their children.
The airing of the clip on news shows, as if it were legitimate news, is the thing that really gets his goat. Talking to anyone who knew anything about Golden Eagles - a zookeeper, an ornithologist, anyone who owns a Peterson guide - to get an informed comment doesn't seem to have occurred to the professional newspeople. They seem to get their news off the internet just like the unprofessional hordes.
 
This is very reminiscent of the Thunderbird story about the child being picked up and carried off in Ohio...

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9419603%5E29677,00.html

(not sure why the incident happened in Norway, but the only news link there seems to be is Australian
:confused:
)
The link above is long dead. Here's an item that apparently refers to the same incident ...

Amazing wild life story from Norway: eagle captured a bear!
2004-04-29

Based on information from the national newspaper Aftenposten (NTB) and the local newspaper Trønder-Avisa, this happened in Lierne in Nord-Trøndelag in Norway. Two rangers observed the eagle picking up a bear cub with its sharp claws. ...

Two rangers were on a mission for the Norwegian Government (Statens Naturoppsyn, SNO). It was a real surprise for the rangers. They have never experienced this before and consider the dramatic incident as unique, according to one of the rangers, Mogens Totsos (Totsås).

According to the other rangers Ole Jakob Sørensen, it is known that eagle the capture prey with bigger body weight than a bear cub, but at the same time the bear has been seen as an predator with no enemies in the animal world.

The manager for the Norwegian Regional Government office (in the middle part of Norway), Tore Solstad, says that they didn't expect this to happen.

The Norwegian "kongeørn" ("King Eagle" - Bald Eagle) is the second biggest bird of prey in the country, with a wingspan on 1,90 - 2,25 meter and weights 3-6 kilo. The number of Bald Eagles in Norway is estimated to 700 - 1000. ...

SOURCE: http://www.travelexplorations.com/a...orway-eagle-captured-a-bear.140045-18556.html
 
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Here's another report citing that incident - the abstract of a paper published in Ursus (apparently a journal from the International Association for Bear Research and Management).

Ursus 19(2):190-193. 2008
https://doi.org/10.2192/08SC008.1

Predation by a Golden Eagle on a Brown Bear Cub
access_no.gif

Ole J. Sørensen
Mogens Totsås

Tore Solstad
Robin Rigg
International Association for Bear Research and Management

Received: February 28, 2008; Accepted: April 25, 2008

Abstract
During spring 2004 an adult female brown bear (Ursus arctos) and her 3 cubs-of-the-year were observed outside their den on a south-facing low-alpine slope in central Norway. They remained near the den for 8–10 days and were, except for one day, observed daily by Totsås and other wardens of the Norwegian Nature Inspectorate. On 25 April, as the family was moving along the edge of a steep, treeless slope and down a snowdrift, the smallest cub, at the back of the group, was attacked by a golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos). The cub vocalized loudly as it was lifted off the ground and carried away. The eagle was still carrying the cub when it flew into cloud cover and was lost from view. Although no remains were found, it is probable that the eagle killed the cub. This paper describes the circumstances of the incident and relates it to other observations of attacks by eagles on young bears in Europe and North America.

SOURCE: http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2192/08sc008.1
 
The second article (the abstract) cited above includes the following two references apparently referencing similar events elsewhere:

Nelson, J. N. 1957. Bear cub taken by an eagle.Victoria Naturalist 14:62–63.

Genovesi, P. and E. Cetto. 2003. Predation by a golden eagle on a bear cub in Trentino.International Bear News 12:311.

This latter item is a note published in the August 2003 issue, which can be accessed at:

https://bearbiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/IBN_August_2003.pdf
 
Birds of prey taking (or losing) prey figure in a number of Fortean stories (e.g., thunderbirds taking children or large livestock; disappearing pets / livestock; mystery falls). We have a number of FTMB threads focused on particular incidents, but no single compendium for news items.

I'm therefore starting this thread as a collection place for stories in which birds of prey actually or allegedly carry off domestic animals (pets, livestock, etc.) - particularly domestic animals whose size most folks might assume is too large for a bird of prey to lift and carry.
 
Here's a story about an 8-pound dog snatched by an eagle in Pennsylvania. The dog was found alive circa 4 miles from the scene.

Snatched by hungry eagle, little dog lives to bark the tale
Felipe Rodriguez says he thought he was hallucinating when an eagle snatched his sister’s little white dog from her yard, flapped its massive wings and disappeared over the trees.

... Zoey the 8-pound bichon frise was gone, taken by a hungry raptor Tuesday afternoon not 50 feet from his sister’s house on the banks of the Lehigh River in Pennsylvania, Rodriguez said. ...

Even more astonishing: Zoey would live to bark the tale.

More on that later. But first, let it be said that eagles are quite capable of taking a small dog or a cat.

“It has been documented before, but not that often,” said Laurie Goodrich, a biologist at nearby Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, a ridgetop preserve that annually records tens of thousands of migrating hawks, eagles and falcons.

With food scarce and waterways freezing up, raptors are “looking a little more widely and taking advantage of whatever might be out there,” she said.

Rodriguez said he was by himself at his sister’s home in Bowmanstown, about 80 miles (128 kilometers) north of Philadelphia, and Zoey was playing in the fenced yard when he heard a loud screech, hurried to the door and looked out.

“The bird was holding onto the dog. There was flapping of wings and then it was gone,” said Rodriguez ...

FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/cc6c3dc0ab7c475b...ngry-eagle,-little-dog-lives-to-bark-the-tale
 
This 2008 article from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game generally disputes the idea of eagles attacking, much less carrying off, pets. However, this article is focused on the bald eagles native to the department's jurisdiction.

Eagle Flight and Other Myths; Eagles Don’t Eat Children or Pets

Every few years a story makes the rounds about a bald eagle carrying off a dog or trying to snatch someone’s cat. Biologists who study birds of prey and folks who live around eagles have seen plenty snatching and carrying – as well as swooping and swimming - and they offered insights into what eagles really can and cannot do. ...

SOURCE: http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=343
 
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When I was a kid we had a little bantam hen that had a clutch of chicks. A falcon once tried to grab one. She kicked the shit out of it and it flew off empty-handed. :)

The neighbors were pretty paranoid about birds of prey and believed that any eagle would kill their lambs, so they tended to shoot at anything feathered larger than a pigeon or thereabouts.

There's no doubt that a large eagle is perfectly capable of killing some pets and other domestic animals, but on the whole the danger is exaggerated, and what's more, they kill more rodents, rabbits, hyraxes etc., thus saving the farmer some grazing land.
 
My MIL in Colorado had an owl try to carry off one of her chihuahuas. She and her Hub caused a ruckus so the little guy was dropped with little more than talon scratches.
 
My MIL in Colorado had an owl try to carry off one of her chihuahuas. She and her Hub caused a ruckus so the little guy was dropped with little more than talon scratches.

Have to admit I am surprised the Chihuahuas came off so well. They don't seem to be that robust and Owls aren't exactly that graceful when they come into land on something.

Having flown a couple from the fist the best I could describe the landing is a crash with a vague semblance of grace.
 
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