Animal of the week|The harpy also flies to faraway lands, captures prey and transports its nest.
The harpy is one of the world’s strongest and heaviest birds of prey that lives in Central and South America, journalist Niko Kettunen says in his column.
A female harpy can weigh ten kilograms and is capable of lifting even an adult sloth.
The harpy is becoming endangered as its habitats are being destroyed.
In the west in the hemisphere, the pecking order is clear. America’s big eagle does what it wants. It flies, for example, to faraway countries, grabs its prey and carries it to its nest, and there’s no knocking its beak at it.
It is, of course, a harpy, one of the world’s greatest birds of prey. Harpy, in Latin harpyja harpyis perhaps the strongest and heaviest of the eagles. A female harpy can weigh ten kilograms and is capable of lifting even an adult sloth.
It grabs smaller primates straight from the plunge. In it, the monkey takes off before he even has time to wiggle his facial hair.
Harpyija lives in Central and South America, and its sphere of influence also includes the whole of Venezuela. The king of the jungle makes his nest high up in the branches of the kapok tree and watches over the land and mantu from there.
The harpy is not the largest eagle with wings. Its wingspan is a couple of meters on both sides, so in flight it is roughly the same size as our bald eagle.
Instead, the harpy may be the world’s heaviest eagle. One captive female weighed a record 12.3 kilograms.
With natural food, the harpy may not be able to grow to such a size, but it competes for the title of the heavyweight champion together with the golden sea eagle and the Philippine eagle. All of these can grow to about ten kilos.
On the harpy has huge claws and is a really strong bird of prey. A harpy can indeed capture a sloth from a tree. Full-grown sloths can also weigh closer to ten kilograms.
The harpy gets its name from the harpies of Greek mythology. They were nasty euks, long-clawed monsters that tormented blind Finea and took food right from her nose. The ancient Greeks never saw the harpy eagle themselves. Even the legendary voyages of Odysseus did not reach across the Atlantic.
I’m the head of the food chain, a harpy might say, according to Eppu Normalia. No natural object threatens this top predator.
Except human, of course. The harpy is becoming endangered as its habitats are being destroyed.