The horned eagle, also known as the Hape eagle or the Hobbit eagle, is a type of eagle in the neotropics. They are the largest and strongest birds of prey in the Americas , and most often inhabit the upper canopy of tropical lowland forests.
Note: The Neotropical Realm is one of the eight biogeographic distribution zones that make up the Earth's land surface. It includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the tropical American continent and the entire temperate zone of South America.
Realm: Animal kingdom Animalia
Phylum: Phylum Chordata
Order: Ornithischia Aves
Order: Accipitriformes
Section: Accipitridae
Genus: Harpia
Species: Horned eagle H. harpyja
The upper body feathers of the horned eagle are grayish black, and the lower body is white, with a black space from the chest to the neck.
The head is pale grey with two crowns. Males and females look exactly the same.
The horned eagles are on average 108 cm long, with a short wingspan of 200 cm on average and weigh 6.5-9 kg. Females are larger.
The proportion of the horned eagle to the person
The horned eagle is one of the largest eagles in the world, and only the ape-eating eagles are larger than them.
Philippine Hawk
Imagination of a Haast hawk attacking a moa bird
The extinct Haast eagle is almost 50% larger than them and has the strongest claw grip of more than 179 kg of any surviving adult bird.
The horned eagle has thick, strong and powerful toes, and its claws are up to 13 cm long.
Judging from the skeleton of the horned eagle, its claw proportions are large.
Horned eagles are carnivorous and actively prey. Its prey is mainly mammals that inhabit trees, such as spider monkeys, howler monkeys, proboscis raccoons, anteaters, sloths, porcupines, possums, and they also attack other birds, such as macaws and some reptiles such as iguanas, bi-collared lizards and snakes.
Occasionally, horned eagles hunt larger prey such as capybaras, westerlings, and deer. The horned eagle's claws are extremely strong and can hold down prey, exerting pressures of up to 4.1 M Pascal. They can also pick up objects that are more than three-quarters of their body weight.
Despite its enormous size, the sound it makes when flying is so small that it is not easily detected even when skimming over the head of a prey.
Horned eagles build nests in tall trees. They lay two eggs at a time, and the eggs are white. The growth period of the horned eagle is two years, but it does not fully mature until it is about four or five years old and has the ability to reproduce. When the first egg hatches, the horned eagle ignores the second egg and the second egg does not hatch. The chick is moulted 6 months after birth, but the parents still take care of it for 6-10 months longer. If they harass or threaten their nests, they can become aggressive.
Horned eagles are threatened by logging and hunting, and in most places they are only briefly seen. In Brazil, for example, they have disappeared from the Atlantic forest and are found only in the remote Amazon basin. The IUCN lists horned eagles as near-threaten, while the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora states that they are on the verge of extinction. The Peregrine Fund states that they are conservation-dependent species that require conservation efforts such as feeding and habitat conservation.
The naming of the horned eagle
They were originally described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758 and named Vultur harpyja. It was later incorporated into the genus Self-Reliant Horned Eagle.
The horned eagle's name is related to the Greek myth of Halpia, a human-faced eagle-bodied monster responsible for bringing the dead before Haldies.
For more exciting content, please pay attention to "Animal World"