Have you ever seen a bird so big that people think it must be a human in a bird costume?
Meet the Harpy Eagle.
The Harpy Eagle is native to Central and South America and is one of the largest and most powerful birds around the world. They’re also rare with only less than 50,000 harpy eagles all over the world.
Carl Linnaeus, the “father of taxonomy” and Swedish physician, zoologist and botanist, was the first one to refer to these raptors as harpy eagles, although he called them harpy vultures at first.
The Harpy Eagle’s name was inspired by Greek mythology beast, Harpies, who had the face of a human and the body of an eagle.
They’re huge black and gray birds of prey with equally huge claws with talons that are three to five inches long. They’re 3 to 4.5 feet high with a wingspan of 6 feet and they weigh anywhere from 8.5 to 20lbs.
So yes, it’s easy to mistake them for young children in a bird costume.
Their gray head is covered with a double crest of feathers. And when the harpy eagle feels a threat or just wants to show off, the crest of feathers fan out.
They also got disk feathers on their faces, which they can lift or let fall when they want. These facial feathers are also beneficial because they direct sound waves to the harpy eagle’s ears. Their chest, back, and upper wings are black in color while the belly is white and their tail and legs are black and white.
They live in canopy treetops of lowland tropical rainforests because they need big trees and wide territories so their numbers will grow.
Their nests can be found in the tallest trees in the jungle and they add different materials to build it, including sticks, branches, plants, and even animal fur. It’s so big, it can fit a full-grown human. And the harpy eagle uses the nest over and over and keeps adding to it to maintain its size.
They are adaptable though and can live in another place that’s not their natural habitat as long as there is enough to eat, they have tall trees to nest in, and people don’t harm them.
Despite the 6-feet wingspan though, they have short wings and cannot fly long distances in one swoop. They fly slowly and move from tree to tree.
They are active in the daytime and, with their sharp vision and hearing, they swoop low in the dark rainforest to hunt for their food. And when they’re not hunting, they’re settled on high trees.
They don’t hunt every day for food though. They usually hunt arboreal animals, including iguanas, parrots, porcupines, coatimundis, and raccoons. And they can feed on these animals for several days and even if the dead animal has gone rotten, the harpy eagles have a high tolerance for eating it. This allows them to go a week or more without the need to hunt for more food.
Since harpy eagles rank on the top of the food chain, they have no reason to fear anyone or anything so there’s not much of a need to be aggressive. They’re not the friendliest but they do allow humans to approach them. Petting them or touching them though is a different subject.
One of the major reasons they get aggressive though is when an animal or human approaches their bird nest.
They can live anywhere from 25 to 35 years in the wild and they only breed every two years. They only lay one to two eggs, which the male and female harpy eagle take turns to incubate.
Unfortunately, the population of harpy eagles is now dwindling. They thrive in big, expansive rainforests, which are being cut down even more now.
Animals are forced to move and the number of animals the harpy eagles can hunt dwindle.
Sometimes, some of them move to the edge of the forest but then they are subject to harm from humans. Because they misunderstand harpy eagles, humans become scared of their appearance and height and attack them because they’re afraid they might get attacked by the harpy eagle.
And that’s not true that’s why non-profit organizations work hard to educate people about harpy eagles.
Watch the video below to learn more about the harpy eagle.
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