Golden Eagle Attacks Deer, A Photo Of An Epic Confrontation


A camera trap captures a Golden Eagle attacking a young sika deer at Lazovskii State Nature Reserve in the southern Russian Far East on Dec. 1, 2011.

For decades, circumstantial evidence has shown that Golden Eagles do indeed attack large mammals like deer and even bear cubs.

But in a paper published Monday in the Journal of Raptor Research, Linda Kerley of the Zoological Society of London and Jonathan Slaght of the Wildlife Conservation Society unveiled stunning images of an adult Golden Eagle attacking and killing a young sika deer, weighing 88 to 100 pounds.

The images were captured by a camera trap the researchers set up to study Siberian (Amur) tigers in the Russian Far East.

Instead, the cameras captured what the authors of the paper say may be the first "documentation" of such an attack.

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