LOOK: Eagle hunts and snatches lion cub
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In the famous words of the intro to 'The Lion King', "It's the circle of life, and it moves us all."
As humans, we like to think that we are at the top of the food chain with other carnivorous predators not too far below us.
Unfortunately, nature has the tendency to humble you.
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Who truly is the predator and who is the prey?
A new article by National Geographic might have you questioning everything you think you know about wild animals.
According to the publication, in December 2012, tour guides in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve witnessed a series of killings that would confuse most people.
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The killings were targeting the savannah's top predators - lions.
It turns out that a martial eagle (pictured above) had followed a pride for weeks and chose to swoop at the right time, killing three lion cubs.
This is an eagle really looking at these lions and thinking, ‘I’m going to systematically hunt these lions".
This was not the only incident.
Photographer Jes Lefcourt managed to capture the picture below in March 2019, which shows a martial eagle snatching a lion cub:
Martial eagles have a wingspan exceeding 1.8 metres, with adult females weighing more than 4.5kg and males around 3kg.
This species often tries to kill larger prey.
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Richard Stratton Hatfield (Ph.D. candidate at Wageningen University and Research) and his team only recently realised that these birds were preying on other predators as they collected seven records of them preying on lion cubs.
The earliest case was reported in 2008 and the most recent was in 2023.
Essentially, Hatfield describes it best:
The relationships between top predators at the top of the [food] pyramid are complicated.
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Main image courtesy of iStock