Fact Check: Eagles Don’t Live up to 70 Years and they Don’t Break their Beaks
This video posted by this source on Facebook called Team Vestige is about eagles being motivating because of their natures and how they live their lives. The sad part is that this source includes many accounts of false information. Team Vestige, although many of their posts are in Arabic, has many videos on how animals are inspirational and is an inspirational speaker group themselves. The video they posted on lions is almost as inaccurate as this post on eagles, but this eagle post blew up the most and had many believe them.
The post claims these are facts about eagles and they spread around about a year ago on social media. Most of the footage in the video doesn’t prove their points either and is taken from National Geographic and other animal networking streams.
The first falsity claimed in this video is that eagles can live to 70 years and over. This is only a myth, according to the National Eagle Center’s website.
70–80% of eagles don’t make it past five years into their adult lives. Many live to a hardy 20–25 years after leaving the nest. Eagles held in captivity live for even longer, which might have been where the living 70 years and over myth came from. They still only live for 40–50 years in captivity because of their controlled environment and food sources, which is still not enough to reach the crux of the myth.
It may have been inspirational for this video to exaggerate an eagle fact for under #Motivation, but telling false facts about these majestic birds has a detriment to their beauty.
Another mishandled fact in the video is the bird’s survival tactics. In the last bits of the video, it explains that these birds of prey will either die or change. And they claim the solution for eagles changing is that they break off their beak against a rock by chipping away slowly at it and wait there for a new one to grow back. This process apparently takes 150 days.
Eagles don’t and cannot physically chip away at their own beaks. This process would be very painful for the bird and would eventually kill it. The beak is the most important weapon next to the talons that the bird of prey has to its advantage. Without it, there is no doubt that the eagle will eventually perish, hence why having no beak for 150 days is impossible for the birds. They would starve.
The Rebirth of the Eagle Story on Minnesota Bound’s website explains that an eagle cannot physically carry out its life without a beak, since it is so important for its food source.
According to National Eagle Center’s forums, the question of if beaks can grow back is brought up. Beaks do naturally sharpen and grow back because they are made from keratin. Normal use keeps the beak in proper order and shape.
There have been instances of eagles being able to survive after a fatal beak injury, but that is only if it is in the care of humans. The story of Beauty and the Beak explains the rehabilitation process of these broken beaks. Many of them can’t grow them back, but have to get artificial beaks. This is technically a process that cannot happen naturally in the wild, like the video says it can.
The fact may have been misconstrued from the fact that eagle’s beaks do take quite a beating during the time they are used. Eagles can use them to tear flesh, but that also means they can bump them into rocks and branches. This doesn’t chip the beak, it sharpens it for more uses. Eagles keep their beaks sharp and ready for hunting, it is a natural process they procure to keep themselves ready for the prowl.
The video mentions when the eagles get old, their talons can’t grab things easily and their beaks droop. This isn’t true either. Their beaks naturally droop, because it is used to tear flesh. Their predatory beaks are meant to bend downward to tear and reap away at flesh. Bird beaks have different uses depending on their shapes, the eagle’s beak is supposed to be drooping downward
About the 150 days of not eating fact this video claims, it is not true either. There are not many creatures on this earth that can survive implicitly for 150 days without food. Eagles are one of them which cannot. They can only survive without food for a couple of days, according to Rebirth of the Eagle Story. They have a hunting instinct and it is not in their nature to sit around and wait for a new beak to grow in, which also physically can’t happen.
These motivational eagle facts took a lot of people on by surprise, and had many people fooled. The people who made this video and posted it should have looked up eagle facts and researched a bit better than they ended up doing. The video looked more professional than not, and only highlighted eagle myths that people have already figured out for years. At least the video had an emotional and motivational push to it, even if all of that motive is not true.
