Science: Eagle Power

Cooing contentedly, the little girl toddled out the front gate and started down the road. A swift dark shape which had been wheeling in the blue sky plummeted down. It was an enormous eagle. The little girl saw the sinister shape, flinched and screamed, but the fierce talons closed on tender flesh, the child was caught into the air, and with powerful pinions beating, the eagle headed for its eyrie. At that moment the child’s father spreng out the door with his rifle. Without an instant’s hesitation, risking the child’s life if his aim were not true, he fired. The great bird tumbled to earth. Except for lacerations, the little girl was unhurt. . . .

This is an immortal folk tale. In Nature Magazine last week Ornithologists Lewis and Marian Walker produced proof it is moonshine. They had worked it all out with weights on a powerful and well-muscled golden eagle.

With a wingspread of six to seven feet, the adult golden eagle is about the same size as the full-grown bald eagle (U. S. national emblem) but the golden eagle is fiercer and stronger. It preys mostly on small mammals such as rabbits and squirrels, whereas the bald eagle’s favorite food is fish. The Walkers took a baby golden eagle from an eyrie in California, christened him “Caesar,” trained him to fly and return like a falcon. When Caesar was fully grown, they tested his capacity load.

Giving Caesar the benefit of an elevated takeoff, the experimenters first launched him with lead weights totaling two pounds attached to his feet. His flight was “normal, effortless, playful.” When the weights were increased to four pounds his flights were shorter, obviously strained, and there were no dips, glides, circles. Eight pounds Caesar could not handle at all. Though he “beat the air wildly” he flew only 30 or 40 ft. before flumping to earth.

The Walkers were willing to concede that a wild bird might be a little stronger than Caesar—but not much. Caesar is husky. Conclusions: 1) probably no eagle has ever carried off a child of any age; 2) certainly no eagle has ever carried off a child old enough to get about by itself.