You may be tough, but you will never be golden-eagle-taking-out-a-deer-tough. That's right, according to a paper and images that were published in the September issue of Journal of Raptor Research, a golden eagle caught a young sika deer somewhere in the Russian Far East.
"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 Dr. 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 cameras that caught the bizarre sighting have been used the last six years to monitor the endangered Amur tigers in the Lazovskii State Nature Reserve in Primorye in the southern Russian Far East. The images the cameras generally capture are more routine: common prey and the occasional resident or passing tiger. The research team hopes to better understand the tigers' habits and population structure by the information gathered from these images.
During the hunt in question, the cameras snapped three images, which captured only a two-second period of what appears to be an adult eagle clinging to the deer's back amidst a backdrop of deep snow and barren, slender trees. The research team found the carcass two weeks later just a few meters away from the cameras.
These giant, winged predators are known to have eyes and talons bigger than their stomachs, according to co-author Dr. Jonathan Slaught of the Wildlife Conservation Society. While their usual prey are small creatures such as rabbits, the golden eagles have been known to go for larger animals such as coyotes and deer. Slaught even referenced a record in 2004 of a golden eagle taking a brown bear cub.
No evidence so far suggests that golden eagles regularly attack deer or that they have an influence on the deer population, according to Kerley. "I've been assessing deer causes of death in Russia for 18 years—this is the first time I've seen anything like this." Slaught agrees, adding, "Dr. Slaght added, "In this case I think Linda just got really lucky and was able to document a very rare, opportunistic predation event."
