The largest eagle hunted unlike any other bird of prey (2021)

A recent study reconstructs how Haast's eagle, a 15-kg raptor with up to a three-metre wingspan, hunted New Zealand's giant moa by combining eagle-like attack mechanics with vulture-like feeding. Digital 3D models of bone and skull strength show powerful talons capable of toppling huge prey but a skull adapted more for pulling flesh from bone than for shaking, and a beak stronger than living vultures. The eagles likely knocked moa onto their sides or ambushed them in bogs, targeted the back of the neck to deliver a killing beak-blow, then fed on internal organs at the carcass rather than carrying prey away. DNA evidence also places Haast's eagle closer to the small little eagle than to larger relatives, an example of rapid island gigantism that produced a "flying tiger" within about two million years.

The species' unique combination of traits explains longstanding puzzles about its proportions and behaviour: relatively short wings, huge body, and possible featherless head depicted in Māori cave art suited feeding on large carcasses. Human arrival around 700-750 years ago, forest clearance and moa hunting precipitated its extinction, and oral traditions even suggest it may once have attacked humans. The work, performed by an international team and reported in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, highlights a predator with no modern analogue.