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Thanks to Eva and Anbo for suggesting the harpy eagle!\n\nFurther reading:\n\nCrested Eagle Feeding a Post-Fledged Young Harpy Eagle\n\nHarpy eagle with a food [By http://www.birdphotos.com - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3785263]:\n\n\n\nThe harpy eagle has great big feet and talons:\n\n\n\nThe harpy eagle with its feather crown raised [photo by Eric Kilby]:\n\n\n\nThe New Guinea harpy eagle looks similar to its South American cousin [By gailhampshire from Cradley, Malvern, U.K - New Guinea Harpy Eagle. Harpyopsis novaeguineae, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86187611]:\n\n\n\nRuppell's griffon vulture:\n\n\n\nShow transcript:\n\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\n\nWe\u2019ve been talking about a lot of mammals lately, so let\u2019s have an episode about birds. Anbo suggested the harpy eagle not too long ago, and a much longer time ago Eva suggested the harpy eagle and other raptors.\n\nThe word raptor can be confusing because it refers to a type of small theropod dinosaur as well as a type of bird. When referring to a bird, the term raptor includes eagles, hawks, vultures, owls, and other birds of prey. And that includes the harpy eagle.\n\nThe harpy eagle lives throughout much of Central and South America, although not as far south as Patagonia. It has a wingspan up to about seven feet across, or over 2 meters, and like other raptors, females are larger than males. This isn\u2019t an especially big wingspan for an eagle, but that\u2019s because the harpy eagle hunts in forests and needs short, broad wings that allow it to maneuver through branches.\n\nThe harpy eagle is a beautiful bird. It has a light gray head and darker gray or black body, and is white underneath with delicate black stripes on its leg feathers, with broader stripes on its tail and wings. It has a black ring around its neck, huge yellow feet with enormous talons, and a black bill. Each talon, which is the term for a raptor\u2019s claws, can be over 5 inches long, or 13 cm, while its feet in general are bigger than a grown man\u2019s hand, even if the man has especially big hands.\n\nMost striking of all is the harpy eagle\u2019s crest, also sometimes referred to as a crown. The crown is made of long, rounded feathers and most of the time they don\u2019t show very much. When a harpy eagle is alarmed, it raises the feather crown and poofs out the feathers on its face, which makes its head look bigger and sort of owl-shaped.\n\nThe harpy eagle mostly lives in lowland rainforests. It mates for life and doesn\u2019t have babies every year. Every two or three years a harpy eagle pair will build a huge nest out of sticks in the top of the tallest tree they can find. The female lays two eggs, which the parents care for together. The female spends most of her time incubating the eggs while the male brings her food, although he will also take a turn incubating while she goes out to stretch her wings and do a bit of hunting herself. When the first egg hatches, the parents bring the baby lots of food and give it lots of attention--but they ignore the other egg at that point, which usually doesn\u2019t hatch as a result. A harpy eagle chick is all white at first, and although it can fly at around 6 months old, its parents will keep feeding it for almost another year.\n\nThe harpy eagle is increasingly threatened due to habitat loss and poaching. Because it\u2019s such a big bird, many people shoot it because they think it\u2019s dangerous to livestock or children. But it mostly eats monkeys, sloths, kinkajous and coatis, iguanas, and other medium-sized animals. It\u2019s rare that it attacks livestock since it mostly hunts within the tree canopy for arboreal animals. If your lambs and chickens are sitting on tree branches, you already have a bigger problem than harpy eagles eating them.\n\nA captive breeding program has been started in various zoos around the world, while conservationists work to protect the harpy eagle\u2019s natural habit...