Legendary man-eating New Zealand bird 'did exist'
A giant man-eating bird that appears in ancient Maori legends did actually exist, according to new research.
The Te Hokioi was described as a huge black-and-white predator with a red crest and yellow-green tinged wingtips, in an account given to Sir George Gray, an early governor of New Zealand.
Scientists now think the stories handed down by word of mouth and depicted in rock drawings refer to Haast's eagle, a raptor that became extinct just 500 years ago.
Haast's eagle (Harpagornis moorei) was discovered in swamp deposits by Sir Julius von Haast in the 1870s, the Independent reports.
It was at first thought to be a scavenger because its bill was similar to a vulture's with hoods over its nostrils to stop flesh blocking its air passages as it rooted around inside carcasses.
But a re-examination of skeletons using modern technology, including CAT scans, by researchers at Canterbury Museum in Christchurch and the University of New South Wales in Australia showed it had a strong enough pelvis to deliver a deadly blow as it dived at speeds of up to 80kph.
The bird has a wingspan of up to three metres and weighed 18kg. It was twice the size of the largest living eagle and its talons were as big as a tiger's claws.
"It was certainly capable of swooping down and taking a child," said Paul Scofield, the curator of vertebrate zoology at the Canterbury Museum.
"They had the ability to not only strike with their talons but to close the talons and put them through quite solid objects such as a pelvis. It was designed as a killing machine."
Its main prey would have been moa, flightless birds which grew to as much as 250kg and 2.5 metres tall.
"In some fossil sites, moa bones have been found with signs of eagle predation," Dr Scofield said.
New Zealand has no native land mammals because it became isolated from other continents in the Cretaceous, more than 65 million years ago.
As a result, birds filled niches usually populated by large mammals such as deer and cattle.
"Haast's eagle wasn't just the equivalent of a giant predatory bird," said Dr Scofield. "It was the equivalent of a lion."
The eagle is thought to have died out after the arrival, 1000 years ago, of humans, who exterminated the giant moa.
The finding was published in The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
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Extint, Giant Eagle was fearsome predator
DEERFIELD, IL (September, 2009) – Before humans colonized New Zealand about 750 years ago, the largest inhabitants of the islands were birds unlike those anywhere else in the world. Giant, flightless birds known as moa were the main plant-eaters, feeding both on the ground and in the branches of trees. The role of predator, according to a study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, was filled by a giant, extinct raptor known as Haast’s eagle (Harpagornis moorei)....
“This science supports Māori [native New Zealander] mythology of the legendary pouakai or hokioi, a huge bird that could swoop down on people in the mountains and was capable of killing a small child,” said Paul Scofield, lead author of the study.
Haast’s eagle became extinct a mere 500 years ago, probably due to habitat destruction and the extinction of its prey species by early Polynesian settlers.
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