Via basically everyone, this video is unbelievable. A golden eagle tries – and fails, thank god – to fly away with somebody’s baby:
Golden eagles have been filmed hunting reindeer calves and adult deer, so that baby was lucky.
Update
“This video is unbelievable” was clearly my subconscious being more right than I thought, because I actually don’t believe this video is true.
A few people have watched it closer than I have, and frame-by-frame there are some things visible which are either very strange artefacts, or signs of a good CGI job.
For instance, when the bird swoops down, its shadow pops in one frame after it does. And for one frame, and one frame only, around three seconds in, its right wing becomes transparent.
Then there is the slightly odd motion of the child after the eagle lets go of it. Not only does it carry on going up – which would just be momentum – but its ascent actually speeds up a bit before falling.
Then there’s the smell-test of the circumstances. The YouTube uploader joined yesterday, has never posted any other videos, and hasn’t linked their account to anything else. If you’re making a YouTube account these days, you have to make a special effort not to link that account to something like a G+ profile, and the uploader seems to have gone to that effort.
And finally, the Isle of Mull Eagle Watch team think that that’s not a golden eagle at all, but a juvenile eastern imperial eagle, which is not native to North America and unlikely to be hanging around Montreal parks.
None of this is conclusive evidence; but it’s enough for me. I’ve changed the headline of this piece to reflect that. In the meantime I’m trying to find a way to contact MrNuclearCat, to get their side of the story.
Update 2
It’s confirmed: the video was a hoax by a Montreal animation school, Centre NAD:
The “Golden Eagle Snatches Kid” video, uploaded to YouTube on the evening of December 18, was made by Normand Archambault, Loïc Mireault and Félix Marquis-Poulin, students at Centre NAD, in the production simulation workshop class of the Bachelors degree in 3D Animation and Digital Design.
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