40 Fun Facts About Harpy Eagle

A harpy eagle's rear talons grow about as long as the claws of which large North American predator?

Grizzly bear claws and a harpy eagle's rear talons both reach three to five inches, giving the bird the largest talons of any living eagle.

Which tree-dwelling mammals, plucked from high branches, make up most of a harpy eagle's diet?

Sloths made up 79 percent of the prey delivered to one studied Amazon nest, and a harpy eagle can pluck a full-grown one off a branch in flight.

Which country made the harpy eagle its national bird and shows one on its coat of arms?

Panama declared the harpy eagle its national bird in 2002, after a campaign in schools and communities taught people that the huge raptor is not dangerous.

The harpy eagle has a ring of face feathers that funnels sound to its ears, like which other birds?

Owls are famous for the facial disc, yet the harpy eagle is one of the few daytime raptors with one, and it can raise or lower the feathers at will.

What surprising thing can a harpy eagle do with its head to get a better look at prey?

A harpy eagle can turn it upside down to study a target, and its eyes can pick out an object under an inch wide from 200 metres away.

In a harpy eagle pair, which bird is typically almost twice the weight of the other?

The female can weigh up to 20 pounds, nearly double her mate, so she tackles the heaviest prey while he catches smaller animals more often.

The harpy eagle is named after winged, clawed monsters from which ancient mythology?

Greek myth describes the harpies as birds with the faces of women, sent to punish the Thracian king Phineus by spoiling every meal set before him.

A harpy eagle's legs are often said to be as thick as which part of a small child?

Wrist is the usual comparison, and those thick legs drive talons that can crush the bones of prey on impact.

The harpy eagle's long tail is often compared to which part of a boat?

Rudder is the comparison biologists use: short wings and a long steering tail let the harpy eagle weave through dense forest at up to 50 miles per hour.

What usually happens to the second egg in a harpy eagle nest once the first chick has hatched?

It is abandoned, because raising a single chick takes so much effort that the second egg is thought to be only a backup in case the first fails.

The harpy eagle is most common in which South American country?

Brazil holds most of the Amazon basin, the harpy eagle's last great stronghold, though the bird has been all but wiped out of the country's Atlantic rainforest.

Which bird, with a ten-foot wingspan, keeps the harpy eagle from being the largest bird of prey?

Andean condor wings can span over three metres, but that giant is mainly a scavenger, while the harpy eagle kills its own large prey.

Alongside shooting, what is the main threat to the survival of harpy eagles across Latin America?

Deforestation hits harpy eagles hard because each breeding pair needs several square miles of undisturbed forest with tall trees for nesting.

Which feature on a harpy eagle's head fans out when the bird feels threatened?

Crest is the word for the long dark feathers on the crown, which the harpy eagle fans out when alarmed and flattens again when calm.

How does a harpy eagle most often hunt in the rainforest?

Perch and wait saves energy: a harpy eagle may sit silently on a branch for up to 23 hours, and you will never see one soaring above the rainforest.

Which towering tree, also called the silk-cotton tree, is the harpy eagle's favourite nesting site?

Kapok trees rank among the tallest in South America, and a local belief that felling one brings bad luck may help protect the eagles' nests.

Which famous American zoo was for years the only one in the United States to breed harpy eagles?

San Diego Zoo began hatching harpy eagle chicks in 1992, and two of its young birds were later released into the rainforest.

The harpy eagle's range runs from northern Argentina all the way up to the south of which country?

Mexico marks the northern limit, where the harpy eagle once reached Veracruz but today probably survives only in the forests of Chiapas.

What do conservationists call the harpy eagle, because saving it protects everything in its forest?

Umbrella species need so much intact habitat that guarding a harpy eagle's territory also shelters the monkeys, trees and other wildlife living there.

Carl Linnaeus, naming the harpy eagle in 1758, first placed it in a genus with which other birds?

Vultures shared the genus Vultur with the harpy eagle in his catalogue, until a French ornithologist gave the bird its own genus, Harpia, in 1816.

The mythical harpies behind the harpy eagle's name take their own name from a word meaning what?

Snatchers is the literal sense of the old word, which suits a bird that grabs heavy prey from the treetops and flies off without landing.

Which Asian country's giant national eagle was once thought the harpy eagle's nearest relative?

Philippines forests hold the Philippine eagle, a look-alike giant long known as the monkey-eating eagle, but DNA studies showed the two are not close kin.

Which huge tropical island is home to a forest raptor sometimes also called a harpy eagle?

New Guinea has the Papuan eagle, a long-legged hunter of tree-dwelling marsupials that genetic studies place close to the harpy eagle of the Americas.

What do harpy eagle parents keep bringing to the nest after hatching, possibly to keep insects away?

Fresh green twigs keep arriving long after the nest is built, and some researchers think the greenery also keeps the chick cooler.

A male harpy eagle arriving at the nest with food makes calls likened to which farmyard bird?

Goose is the bird observers compare him to, yet away from the nest the harpy eagle is almost completely silent.

What do paired harpy eagles do with their beaks while nest building, apparently as a bonding ritual?

Paired harpy eagles rub them together for a few seconds between loads of sticks, and the two birds are believed to stay partners for life.

Which Latin American country printed a harpy eagle on the back of one of its banknotes?

Venezuela showed the harpy eagle on a bolívar note, and the country also sent birds from its zoos to help found a captive breeding flock.

In which Central American country were captive-bred harpy eagles freed in the Rio Bravo reserve?

Belize had lost almost all of its harpy eagles before a restoration project began releasing captive-bred birds, one of them named Hope.

What colour are a harpy eagle's massive feet, in sharp contrast to its black talons?

Yellow feet and toes carry black talons up to five inches long, and the hooked bill is black as well.

A live harpy eagle played an extinct giant eagle from which country in the BBC's Monsters We Met?

New Zealand was home to Haast's eagle, the largest eagle known to have existed, which hunted giant flightless moa until both died out.

Which dusk-hunting raptor of Africa and Asia is among the harpy eagle's closest living relatives?

Bat hawk sounds an unlikely cousin for a giant, since it swallows its small prey whole in flight, yet it sits in the same subfamily as the harpy eagle.

In which US state did a raptor charity first breed harpy eagles, in chambers mimicking a rainforest?

Idaho proved too cold and dry, with only ten chicks hatched in about seven years, so the breeding birds were moved to a new centre in the tropics.

By hunting which egg-raiding primates do harpy eagles help protect other rainforest birds?

Capuchin monkeys raid nests so heavily that, without a top predator to thin them out, sensitive bird species could vanish from a forest.

Which African forest raptor, another monkey hunter, is seen as the harpy's Old World counterpart?

Crowned eagle and harpy eagle are not close relatives, yet similar forest lives gave them similar skeletons, a case of convergent evolution.

The charity that released nearly fifty harpy eagles is named after which fast-diving bird of prey?

Peregrine falcon recovery was the group's first cause in 1970, and its harpy eagle releases ran from 1998 until 2008.

Which harpy eagle trait, unusual in a wild raptor, reportedly makes it an easy target for hunters?

Fearlessness around people, combined with sheer size, has been said to make the harpy eagle an irresistible target for anyone with a gun.

Which large tree-climbing lizards, an important food in Suriname, do harpy eagles also hunt?

Iguanas join snakes and even tortoises on the reptile side of a menu that covers more than a hundred recorded prey species.

What colour is a newly hatched harpy eagle chick, before its plumage darkens with each yearly moult?

White fluff covers the hatchling, which is small enough to sit in a human palm yet reaches adult size in only five or six months.

How does a harpy eagle gather the hundreds of sticks that go into its giant treetop nest?

A harpy eagle breaks off live branches by gripping one in its talons and flapping hard until it snaps, and a finished nest holds more than 300.

Which tall stork weighs scarcely less than the harpy eagle, perhaps Central America's heaviest bird?

Jabiru storks are the tallest flying birds in Central and South America, though the harpy eagle still edges them on average weight.