IS THERE ANY TRUTH TO THIS?

Vultures eat carrion, not live animals.

Have they checked the local fast food/burger joints?

chubri777 wrote in post #16001369
Cats do not belong outside so if Hawks and Eagles and Owls are taking them as prey it seems like the cat owners might want to re-think letting little fluffy out of the house.
Feral cat advocates always say the reason they take so many birds and small animals is because it's their natural instinct to hunt. So when an Eagle, Owl, or Hawk takes a cat it's only using it's natural instinct to hunt.

I agree. Wasan't complaining about any of the cases, just commenting that it happened.

Wow, my goodness.

Vultures don't have the talon strength to kill anything or the beak strength to eat anything freshly killed. They can't rip into a tough hide of an animal, and can only eat something that has been dead a while and is decaying. That's one big reason that there has been so much debate about whether they should be classified as raptors. The definition of the term raptor is "to seize" and vultures can't do that. There is NO WAY vultures are attacking anything that is even remotely alive or has been recently alive (I'm talking about New World vultures.)

I read the article about the Griffon vultures eating that hiker right after she died, maybe it's true. I don't know much about Old World vultures. But the article also made the point that they are becoming more aggressive due to lack of food. They would normally eat decaying carcasses of livestock, but everyone is burning those now for fear of mad cow disease. So now the farmers want to start shooting vultures. Eliminate their natural prey (other dead wild animals), then eliminate their alternative prey (dead livestock), and when the vultures have nothing left to eat and become desperate, let's start shooting them!

Also in that video, yes, golden eagle are fierce predators that will take on much larger prey than most raptors. But that was not a natural situation, it was set up by hunters who had multiple eagles going after the wolf, and we don't know what condition that wolf was in to start with. I'm hard pressed to believe that an eagle would go after a healthy adult wolf in the wild, why would it take that kind of risk when there is easier prey available? Looks like that wolf had the first eagle beat until the hunters unleashed the second eagle.

A large female red-tailed hawk only weighs about 3 pounds. Sure it might go after a tiny kitten or puppy, but pet larger than that is much more of a danger to the hawk than the other way around.

Great horned owls are very fierce predators, so I could see them going after a small cat or dog. Calves? I don't think so. A large female GHOW might weigh 4 pounds, no way an owl could carry off anything larger than a few pounds. If someone has a problem with mice around their barn, they should be grateful for the owls!

I could see an eagle going after a small pet, they are opportunistic hunters/scavengers. But even an adult female bald eagle might weigh only 10 pounds, less than many cats and most dogs. And they're not likely to take a chance on prey that can fight back.

How about a bald eagle attacking a grizzly?
http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=hV3ajQRniNg

When I lived in Pensacola I had a coworker whose wife's little tea cup purse poodle was snatched by a raptor of some sort. It's safe to say she was a bit traumatized.

Scatterbrained wrote in post #16020779
How about a bald eagle attacking a grizzly?
http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=hV3ajQRniNg

When I lived in Pensacola I had a coworker whose wife's little tea cup purse poodle was snatched by a raptor of some sort. It's safe to say she was a bit traumatized.

The wife or the poodle?

Tom Reichner wrote in post #15907511
Heck, if eagles hunt and kill adult wolves effectively*, as they have been trained to do, then surely a decent sized hawk like a Redtail can kill cats, rabbits, and any other mammals of similar size.

*here's the proof:
http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=AXR62wgdvW4

There is more to that story/video, IMO. I believe they chase the wolves on horseback until they are exhausted. Then they release the eagles for an easy kill. This is cruel.

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I had my puppy tied up out back in march, then let him in and he soon wanted to go out again so I tied him up out front. I went out to get him, walked him around the house and was surprised to see a bald eagle sitting in a tree in my yard just over where I had been tying the puppy up. That was a close call. First time I have seen an eagle in my yard.

davtackett wrote in post #16023971
There is more to that story/video, IMO. I believe they chase the wolves on horseback until they are exhausted. Then they release the eagles for an easy kill. This is cruel.

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Very possible, it's also possible that it's a "canned hunt" type situation. Wolves caught in live traps of some sort then released when someone is ready with a bird. I THINK the famous video of a golden eagle killing a deer is this type, and there's an old book calld Bird of Jove that mentions this type of "hunt". Haven't read it for years, but I believe they released a deer from a trap box and the eagle killed it in a contest. The bird with the best(shortest) time was the winner.

Scatterbrained wrote in post #16020779
How about a bald eagle attacking a grizzly?
http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=hV3ajQRniNg

When I lived in Pensacola I had a coworker whose wife's little tea cup purse poodle was snatched by a raptor of some sort. It's safe to say she was a bit traumatized.

Looks like the Eagle used the bear to get more lift on it's take-off!

blueM wrote in post #16020932
The wife or the poodle?

My thought too, but I guess they were both quite traumatized.

Carry off a calf? No. Peck its eyes out? Absolutely. Nature is brutal like that.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #15907633
Golden Eagles are absolutely Bad Ass. Crazy some of the things they get up to.

True story! When I was a young private in the Army, I was stationed at Ft. Richardson, Alaska. During a compass navigation training course, I was attacked by a Golden Eagle. Luckily I had my helmet on when I was struck on the head. I'm sure if anyone would have seen the event, it would have been comical as I was running through the woods being chased by a angry eagle. When I got back to the assembly area, I told my story and was mocked unmercilessly. Obviously, no one was going to believe this story out of a brand new recruit. A week later, another unit was running the course...without helmets! The area was shut down by the authorities for further training and designated a Golden Eagle nesting area.

Bob

Hot Bob wrote in post #16027249
True story! When I was a young private in the Army, I was stationed at Ft. Richardson, Alaska. During a compass navigation training course, I was attacked by a Golden Eagle. Luckily I had my helmet on when I was struck on the head. I'm sure if anyone would have seen the event, it would have been comical as I was running through the woods being chased by a angry eagle. When I got back to the assembly area, I told my story and was mocked unmercilessly. Obviously, no one was going to believe this story out of a brand new recruit. A week later, another unit was running the course...without helmets! The area was shut down by the authorities for further training and designated a Golden Eagle nesting area.

Bob

Great story...loved it!

Some people have nothing better to do then to stretch the truth, or even outright lie. Others get a kick out of telling people lies and having them believe it, but most people don't actually believe them. The problem is that 90% of people wont call out other peoples BS, because they're to0 afraid to start a confrontation. Either that or they know someone who will defend their lie to the grave. I think we all know someone like that you know the one: They tell you something that couldn't even possibly be true, but that person will argue till they are blue in the face, and you just give up arguing, because you know it is a stalemate, because they are too sad and lonely to realize it themselves.

I know about this. Owls and eagles take pet for eating. Last year my aunt's cat was taken by a eagle. I was sorry for that.

SharonJBrown wrote in post #16142822
I know about this. Owls and eagles take pet for eating. Last year my aunt's cat was taken by a eagle. I was sorry for that.

I could see that occasionally happening, that a raptor might go after a small cat or dog. However keep in mind that most cats weigh close to 10lb (my 2 are right around that size) and most dogs weigh considerably more. There are very few owls in the world that approach that size, and even a bald eagle only weighs about 10 lb. So in general it's not a problem because most pets are larger than the typical raptor prey.

On the other hand, outdoor roaming cats present a considerable danger to all birds, including raptors. I recently transported a screech owl that was attacked by a cat (the owl didn't make it.)

They feed on carrion although fanciful stories, sometimes going back many generations, have gained credit through constant repetition and have thus operated as a reinforcement of ancestral fears.

Reintroducing different types of vultures in the Old World required sustained information campaigns to convince people that vultures would not attack people or livestock.

A fairly good introduction to vultures in Europe can be found in this bilingual (French/English) document which a Google search will quickly spot for you:
CT_vautourfauve.pdf

See page 1.1 and 1.2 for details on feeding habits.

As to the unfortunate accident of that lady hiker, police and medics have amply established that she was neither attacked nor eaten alive by vultures.

Some details are found here on how a stupid controversy developed: (scroll down to the bottom of the page to download the English version in pdf format)
http://www.lpo.fr …riste-accident-de-montagn