I was out on the trail the other day when I stopped on a grassy hillside to look at the horizon and have my lunch. over the other side of a small valley there was a herd of what I supposed were feral goats grazing and foraging.
Everything had been peaceful for a long while, though the sounds of soaring birds in the air high above seemed to spell danger.
Suddenly, out of a brief silence, an eagle came bolting down and attempted to grab and carry a young goat.
It flew off without having any success, but it sparked a thought in my head: can eagles really carry goats?
So, can eagles carry goats?
No, eagles cannot carry goats. A good rule of thumb is that eagles can carry half their own weight—at most 6-9 pounds. Even the smallest goats weigh a lot more than this. Eagles may sometimes try their luck, but they would not be able to carry a goat.
It can be surprising to see the physical feats that eagles are capable of—the speed they can move at, the prey they might choose.
But there are solid limitations on their physical abilities, and that certainly includes being able to carry a goat.
Let’s look further into this.
Can an eagle pick up a goat?
No, is the simple answer.
Any average sized goat, even from the moment it has been birthed by its mother, is going to be too heavy for an eagle.
Most goats weigh between 120-170 pounds by the time they’re fully mature.
Eagles, depending on the species, might weigh 7 to 10 pounds.
They can lift about half of that, at maximum—putting goats well off the menu.
Some of the smallest breeds of goat could potentially be a target in their first couple of days of life.
Pygmy goats, for example, might only weight 2-4 pounds at birth.
But this is when they will be most protected, and they will put weight on rapidly.
It won’t be long before the eagle could not even carry a pygmy kid.
As I’ll get into later, eagles have been documented using certain tactics to hunt mountain goats—but they are still not able to carry them.
It is not even close.
but eagles don’t have those huge, clutching talons for nothing.
What can an eagle carry?
What is the biggest animal an eagle can carry?
Firstly, an eagle’s diet consists generally of both living prey and carrion.
Most of them typically hunt mostly mammals and smaller birds.
They don’t tend to go after large prey like goats—although some do and are the exception in that way.
The largest thing most eagles are likely to catch is something about the size of a hare.
They might also hunt and be able to carry grouse and gulls.
One notable exception is the harpy eagle.
This enormous, apex predator has been known to snatch all sorts of tree dwelling mammals out of the safety of their branches—from opossums, to monkeys and even sloths.
Large as these animals are, though, they’re all relatively lightweight.
Do eagles have any means to hunt goats, then?
Can eagles hunt mountain goats?
So, though they definitely cannot carry them, some species of eagle have been documented as employing a somewhat sneaky tactic to enable a feast on mountain goats.
Though this behavior is not exactly commonplace, some eagles have been shown to use their talons to drag unsuspecting mountain goats to their doom by hurling them from a great height.
It takes an enormous amount of effort for an eagle even to do this, and it requires a great deal of calculating on the eagle’s part.
It will strike at a moment when a goat is not on sure ground, and only needs to be nudged a few inches in order to fall.
This behavior is remarkable, but it is not the same as carrying the goats.
Like I said, the massive effort needed even to drag the goat a few inches goes to show that it would be impossible for any eagle to lift a goat into the air.
What do eagles hunt?
It depends largely on the species.
There are dozens of species of eagle living in virtually every biome on the planet, and their environment determines what they eat.
Many eagles living in the frozen north might subsist mainly on carrion, at least during the coldest months when mammals go into hibernation.
Small mammals, though, are the most universal food of eagles.
They hunt mice, rabbits, hares, things like ferrets and mongoose.
They also attack birds on the wing, favoring attacking large flocks of small birds like grouse.
Naturally, all of these prey except the carrion are carried by the eagles.
Compare the feet of an eagle with the feet of a non bird of prey.
They have huge, clutching talons, instead of small, perching feet or webbed flippers.
So, oriented as their hunting is towards carrying their prey, they cannot do it with goats.
Eagles are not completely averse to trying their luck on goats, then.
But no amount of effort and determination will change the fact that they are simply not strong enough to carry a goat of any age.
They can drag them, and use more underhanded tactics to even hunt them in rare cases, but even the largest eagle could not lift up the smallest goat.
They are much fonder of hunting smaller, bitesize prey they can catch and swoop away with.