Thread: Kiwi Bird : the Kiwi equivalent of the great African lion

Haast eagle was 'ultimate killing machine'

• From correspondents in Auckland, New Zealand
• From: AAP
• September 15, 2009 12:01PM

IT might not have killer crocs but New Zealand was once home to an even more fearsome creature that could rip apart humans with its claws.

New research has confirmed that a giant man-eating bird long spoken of in legends actually existed.
And the Haast eagle was even bigger and more deadly than first thought, fulfilling the same role as the killer lions of Africa.
Each creature had a wingspan of three metres and weighed almost 20kg, making more than twice the size of the largest eagle that survives today.
"It was certainly capable of swooping down and taking a child," Paul Scofield, of Canterbury University in New Zealand, said.
Its talons were as big as a tiger's claws, making it the ultimate "killing machine", he said.
"They had the ability to not only strike with their talons but to close the talons and put them through quite solid objects such as a pelvis."

Until now, the eagle has been nothing more than a legendary bird called a Te Hokioi by Maori.
The first known account of this mystical bird was given to 19th Century New Zealand governor Sir George Grey, who described it as a huge black-and-white predator with a red crest and yellow-green tinged wingtips.
Pictures of the giant creature could be found all through early Maori rock drawings but they were presumed imaginary.
Remains of the Haast eagle had been collected in the 1870s but early examinations found it was a scavenger like a vulture.
However, new tests of the skeletons using modern technology, including CAT scans, have revealed the eagle and legendary Te Hokioi are one and the same.
The research, published in The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, concluded the bird is the Kiwi equivalent of the great African lion.
It survived on a diet of moa, another giant but flightless bird and became extinct just 500 years ago, after humans killed off its food source.

I guess it wasn't eating babies then.

for more tabloid fare

Haast's Eagle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Need some of these for our airforce.