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Battle of the deer and eagle

Spoiler alert: eagle wins

DEER VS. EAGLE A camera trap solved the mystery of a deer carcass discovered in the snow. It was killed by a predator that left no tracks.

Linda Kerley, Zoological Society of London (ZSL)

By Ashley Yeager

When a deer carcass appeared a few meters from a camera trap without obvious predator prints, scientists were a bit puzzled.

The mystery was only solved when the team reviewed 2-week-old footage from their camera and saw images of an adult golden eagle tearing into the back of a young sika deer. It was a rare sight, the first reported in the extreme eastern regions of Russia, the scientists suggest.

They published the images and a paper on the predator-prey interaction in the September Journal of Raptor Research.

About Ashley Yeager

Ashley Yeager is the associate news editor at Science News. She has worked at The Scientist, the Simons Foundation, Duke University and the W.M. Keck Observatory, and was the web producer for Science News from 2013 to 2015. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a master’s degree in science writing from MIT.