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I Want One! WOW.. Golden eagle kills deer!
A golden eagle captures a young sika deer in the Russian Far East. The rare attack was captured by a camera trap set up by the Zoological Society of London and Wildlife Conservation Society. Photo credit: Linda Kerley, Zoological Society of London (ZSL)
There’s just three photos covering two-seconds, but they are very rare since they capture an event not seen before: A golden eagle swoops onto the back of a sika deer, drives it to the ground and (not photographed) kills it.
"I saw the deer carcass first as I approached the trap on a routine check to switch out memory cards and change batteries, but something felt wrong about it. There were no large carnivore tracks in the snow, and it looked like the deer had been running and then just stopped and died." said lead author Linda Kerley of the Zoological Society of London, who runs the camera trap project.
"It was only after we got back to camp that I checked the images from the camera and pieced everything together. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.”
The photos quickly spread across the Internet prompting some to worry about the deer's suffering.
The researcher told NPR the deer didn't suffer ... much:
"It is true that we cannot say for sure how the deer died, and it could have died from stress, but I do believe it happened quickly because the first vulture showed up and was photographed in the same camera trap just 68 minutes later followed by other avian and mammalian scavengers. This was the first time I have ever photographed a vulture in a camera trap so I assume they were attracted to the deer carcass. Tracks in snow also showed no indication that the deer struggled for long."
According to the paper published in the Journal of Raptor Research - "First documented predation of sika deer (Cervus Nippon) by golden eagle (Aquila Chrysaetos) in Russian far east" - on the sika kill, here’s some other big animals Golden Eagles have killed:- domestic livestock (Wiley and Bolan 1971, Phillips et al. 1996),
- semidomestic reindeer (Rangifer tarandus; Nybakk et al. 1999, Norberg et al. 2006),
- red deer (Cervus elaphus; Aleksandrov 1968, North- east 1978, Rebecca 1986, Welch 1990),
- roe deer (Capreolus capreolus; Heptner et al. 1961, Ratcliffe and Rowe 1979, Hal- das 1983),
- Siberian musk deer (Moschus moschiferus; Hept- ner et al. 1961),
- pronghorn (Antilocapra americana; Deblin- ger and Alldredge 1996, Wagner 2000),
- mountain goat (Oreamnos americanus; Hamel and Cote 2009),
- saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica; Heptner et al. 1961),
- goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa; Heptner et al. 1961),
- Siberian ibex (Capra sibirica; Yegorov 1955),
- fox (Vulpes spp.; T. Katzner pers. comm.),
- coyote (Canis latrans; Mason 2000),
- brown bear cubs (Ursus arctos; Sorensen et al. 2008).
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