

Maori legend of man-eating bird is true  - ptn
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10597177

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astine
Why does the article present this as some kind of news? We've known of Haast's
eagle for years and it's connection to the Maori legend is common knowledge
among anyone who's heard of the bird.

(Still cool though.)

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charltones
If I read it correctly, the article is implying that recent scientific study
of the strength of the bird's pelvis has shown that the bird was likely to
have been strong enough to make killer blows and crush prey (backing up the
Maori legend) rather than just scavenge like a vulture.

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pmichaud
That isn't a new discovery either. I've spent a great deal of time studying
New Zealand and Māori culture and history specifically (so much that I
actually changed my keyboard layout to Māori so I could write in the
language)... this is old news. Like, generations old.

Edit:

Here's my fairly old page about this very topic:
[http://kotiro.petermichaud.com/research/mythical-
creatures/p...](http://kotiro.petermichaud.com/research/mythical-
creatures/pouakai/)

They have a legend about the "Pouakai" that people have thought for a long
time was the eagle. That old link proves this is old news (or maybe I broke
the story first without realizing 8)

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biohacker42
It's amazing that this eagle most likely descended from the Australian little
eagle. Imagine if Steller's Sea Eagles had made it to NZ.
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Stellers_...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Stellers_Sea_Eagle_with_Man.jpg)

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science4sail
The problem is that ecological niche is a better determiner of size than
ancestry...

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biohacker42
Sure. But evolution prefers to reuse rather then innovate, this can often lead
to interesting limits. For example, we still have a blind spot where the optic
nerve connects to the retina, in all this time we have not evolved a blind
spot free eye. Thus I was wondering if there are some odd limitations in how
big, how quickly a little eagle can evolve, vs what the giant raptors could
do. It was basically evolutionary fan.fic.

