Eagle lifting capacity
Christian Steel
Post to WED
In a WED (Wildlife Ecology Digest) posting, Steve McConnell, Trinity, AL
(swma...@aol.com) wrote:
>In "10,001 Titillating Tidbits of Avian Trivia" by Frank S. Todd (Ibis
Publishing, 1994) question #1209 asks: "Have
>eagles been known to carry off children?".
>
>The answer: "Yes, but only once. The only _documented_ incident occurred on
June 5, 1932, at Leka, Norway, when
>a White-tailed Sea-Eagle picked up 4-year old Svanhild Hansen, carrying her
for nearly a mile before dropping her on
>a narrow ledge only 50 feet from its eyrie, 800 feet up the side of a
mountain. Aside from some scratches, the child
>was unharmed. The little girl was apparently small for her age, and the
eagle probably hit a powerful updraft
>of air at precisely the right moment to provide the required lift."
Steve McConnell is troubled by the word 'documented', by the girl's weight
and by the fact that she was unharmed, and I have to say I understand and
share his concerns. Today, most Norwegian ornithologists are convinced that
the story has to be explained without the help of eagles, and perhaps the
explanation erupted because of a general fear and hatred for creatures with
sharp teeth and claws. Some 20 years ago, the story was more widely accepted
by senior ornithologists, but enhanced knowledge has led to the rejection of
the hypothesis connected to the eagle.
The White-tailed Eagle is rather well liked in all of Norway nowadays. I
find it generally important to express a sober view on the potential danger
of wild animals. Of course, animals (bears, elks, terns, horses - and
perhaps at times wolves) may be dangerous to man, but this is not a very big
problem after all! At least not in Norway...
The Leka story is very well known in Norway, and everyone, ornithologist or
layman, visiting the Leka island in north-western Norway is told about the
incident by the local inhabitants. You will not be very much welcomed if you
express doubt about the eagle story. There has been a lot of debate about
this, and numerous newspaper and magazine pages have been written, as well
as a book and a handful of articles in Norwegian bird journals. Norwegian
ornithologists have also done quite a lot of field experiments on the
lifting capacity of both White-tailed Eagle (weighing approx. 3-7 kg) and
Golden Eagle (weighing approx. 3-6 kg).
To sum up:
- The 3 year and 8 months old girl has, honestly rather mysteriously, (been)
moved from the little village and approximately 1.5 km away and 200 m uphill
to a narrow ledge. A White-tailed Eagle's nest was said to be 20 meters
above the ledge.
- Nobody observed how this happened, but the girl was found at the ledge by
some adults after a long search.
- The girl weighed 19 kg at the time. Field trials, with both wild and
domesticated eagles, show that these birds _at best_ are able to lift about
2-3 kg, perhaps up to 4-5 _downhill_. No weather conditions or other factors
could make it possible for these eagles to carry anything even close to the
girl's weight. (Except for the Bird Phoenix or an eagle with the wingbeat of
a hummingbird).
- The hillside was for many years considered to be impregnable for children,
and both the rescuers and other adults spoke about the difficult climbing up
towards the ledge. That is why a Norwegian ornithologist visited the place
many years later, and aided by some sweets he managed to persuade his 4-year
old daughter to walk/climb _all by herself_ up to the same ledge. The cliff
_is_ rather steep, though, and it is puzzling why the girl would crawl up
there all by herself.
- The girl was at the time not able to explain very clearly what had
happened, but she "remembers" the incident very well now more than 60 years
later. Nobody else saw anything of what happened.
- The girl's clothes still exist in some kind of museum at Leka. Some holes
in the clothes are there, but may have been widened out a bit by all the
visitors' fingers. It seems quite unlikely that an eagle would lift
something gently by the clothing around it. On the contrary, a bird of prey
would normally take a firm grip with its claws, especially if it is very
heavy. The girl was examined by a doctor the same day, and only a small
scratch "from the eagle's claws" was found on her chest.
- It has not yet in Norway been confirmed that any White-tailed Eagle has
shown aggressive behaviour against man or even domesticated animals (Alv
Ottar Folkestad pers. comm.). In the many incidents where cats, sheep, deer
etc. have been killed by eagles, the Golden Eagle has always turned out to
be the sinner. It is commonly observed that White-tailed Eagles eat from
dead animals, but as it has never been shown (neither by observation nor
orthopsy) that the White-tailed Eagle is the actual killer, it is considered
to be an exclusively scavenging species. There are only a very few, but well
documented, stories about Golden Eagles being aggressive towards man. All of
them are people entering a bird's nest or approaching a starved or surprised
bird at its prey. Other (smaller) birds of prey may be more aggressive, e.g.
buzzards, hawks and falcons, as well as other birds like owls, terns, gulls etc.
The story remains pretty mysterious to me, after all. But I am as sure as I
can be that no Norwegian bird could possibly have carried the young girl up
to that ledge! To say it is "documented" that the girl was carried by the
eagle is at the very least a bit brave. It seems literally to be a slightly
heavy task for an eagle, and nobody watched it... Psychologists and
anthropologists may take over from here to explain how the girl ended up on
the ledge, and how the eagle story surfaced.
Christian Steel
Christi...@bio.uio.no
Norwegian Ornithological Society
partner of BirdLife International
_____________________
Christi...@bio.uio.no
Division of Zoology
University of Oslo
Private:
Oppsaltoppen 21 D
N-0687 Oslo, Norway
phone/fax: +47 22 261167
mobile phone: +47 94 265037