![]() But when she kills a rabbit I feel empathy for the rabbit, so I move in and make it a quick kill, a humane dispatch,” he said. “If she plops down and kills a mouse: Eh, no big deal. Perhaps that attitude plays a role in what falconer Taylor does when his red-tailed hawk kills a rabbit. I think it’s just natural that there’s a protective attitude toward those sort of things.” “You look at a small mammal, say, a rabbit. He said he thinks that our protective response extends to cute, furry young ones of other species, and even the adults of such species. “I think it’s innate to humans, and innate to a lot of mammals, that their babies are to be protected.” There’s the “cute, the fuzzy, and the pretty” aspect, which might trigger in us humans a protective response, he said. What determines whether our allegiance lies with the predator or the prey?Ī number of factors, suggested Mike Sweet, a biologist who recently retired from the U.S. He said that young eagles will head in at a shallow angle when aiming for a jack rabbit adult eagles have learned that the hares will jump straight up as much as 16 feet, so they know to attack from straight overhead.Įven if we consciously appreciate the natural design of the animals when we witness a chase or attack, we often find ourselves taking sides. Nine times out of 10 that duck or that pheasant gets away from the peregrine,” Taylor said.Īn animal’s fitness for its role can have a learned component, and as he described one example, he gave a case of the defenses of a prey animal. Nine times out of 10, that rabbit gets away. “The peregrine is the top of the food chain and the best there is, but the odds are with the quarry in most cases. They have adaptations that allow them to escape more often than not. That fitness is also true for animals who are the meals, though, Taylor said. He talked about a peregrine falcon being the epitome of fitness for its role in the food chain, sometimes flying more than 250 miles per hour (you read that correctly) as it dives to make a kill. That’s what they’re made for,” Taylor said. That’s her achieving her greatest ability. “When a hawk catches something, I’m thrilled by it. Sympathies might fall to the robin, but it's good to remember: Most times a bird will escape this situation.Īll of that got me thinking: What determines which critter we root for when predators pursue their prey? And why is watching a pursuit and capture so exciting?įor longtime Minnesota falconer Frank Taylor, the answer to the last question is all about appreciating the features of a creature that equip it for how it lives. Had I been photographing the cedar waxwing, I would have been thrilled to catch it nabbing a dragonfly in flight.Ī fox was spotted with a robin in its clutches. But this one really got to me, I guess because I had invested so much time in that insect. ![]() To go through all of that, only to become a bird’s meal? I’m not 100% sure the bird caught the dragonfly, but they were there, and then before I could blink, they were both gone. Then something happened that I (and maybe the dragonfly) didn’t see coming: A fraction of a second after the insect launched, a cedar waxwing swooped down on it. A few seconds later it took flight, moving faster than I could capture. To get a better look at it I shifted position with difficulty, because I had been crouched in the same position for 40 minutes. Hundreds of shots later, when the insect looked like an adult dragonfly, it climbed to the top of the post and spread its wings. They seemed to inflate, then thin, eventually becoming transparent. Its wings, at first brown, moist and squishy-looking, unfurled. Its tail started out much shorter than its final, slim length. I spent 40 minutes documenting with my camera its slow emergence from a thin shell. Last summer I studied a dragonfly emerging from its nymph stage on the side of wooden post. ![]()
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