Why would bald eagles kill sheep without eating them?
I recently heard someone explaining how a bald eagle killed some of their sheep by grabbing them with their talons and letting them bleed out. But the bald eagles would never eat the sheep. I was saddened and astonished and looked online for more information as to why they would do this. I found articles regarding a farmer in Idaho who had over 50 sheep similarly killed by bald eagles.
Why on earth would they do this without utulizing the meat for food? It blows my mind that bald eagles would seemingly kill just for the sake of it.
I can't find anything online to answer my burning question as to why. The closest thing I have found as far as an answer is just the assumption that they eagles are "honing in on their hunting skills", but that doesn't convince me. Sheep are larger than any of their prey and so targeting and making contact with a large creature doesn't seem like much of a way to increase their hunting accuracy or skill.
Does anyone know why they would do this?
EDIT/UPDATE
There is a lot of skeptism and doubt over the merit of this story so I’d like to add some extra information as well a link to a news article. This happened in June of 2021 and with a Google search you can easily find close to 10 articles about this story of the Idaho farmer losing over 50 sheep. It was very widely covered, and there was even a YouTube video about it which I did not watch because as the thumbnail images scrolled through I saw a bleeding suffering sheep and I don’t like watching videos of things like this. But feel free to watch it for yourself and let me know what you think.
Anyways, I will summarize some of the additional information to clarify some points people were discussing on here.
Some commenters didn’t believe it was a bald eagle. The articles state that the farmer did not know what was doing this until he witnessed it one day. He has had a bald eagle nest on his property for close to 20 years. I do believe he knows what a bald eagle looks like.
Also, he has respect for the birds and does not want to disturb them. One can apply with Fish and Wildlife for a Depredation Permit which in many instances allows for a farmer to disturb the predator in order to encourage them to leave their land so their livestock is not killed. You can read up on it if you please but it essentially gives you the right to use noise, dogs, scarecrows, dismantle nests if applicable, use trained raptors, etc to scare away the predator.
The farmer respects the bald eagles despite all the livestock losses and knows they are just being animals and would not want to do anything to displace them or harm their nest in any way. He cares about them and their babies and wouldn’t want the baby bald eagles to be in a bad situation with the parents gone. He has care and compassion for them and disturbing the birds is not an option for him.
He has moved pastures away from the nest to see if it would help, but sadly the bald eagles are still killing his sheep. His only other option is to file with Fish and Wildlife with a Depredation Claim to get paid back 75% of the value of the livestock losses. I do not believe this is a money grab as some have suggested, since he is taking losses financially and seems sincere. Not everything that is hard to believe is a lie so I want to remind everyone that there are some inexplicable or previously undiscovered happenings that do end up coming into the light.
This man has had many news entities investigate and interview him and yes it is always possible it is a lie, but I do not believe it to be. And I’d assume Fish and Wildlife surely needs some documentation and proof of the occurrence to start a Depredation Permit/Claim because I don’t think they’d hand money out to just anyone saying their livestock has been targeted by predators since as we can imagine, greedy fraudsters could make false claims. So I’d assume you would have to provide them with evidence of the bodies or have an Official come out to see them and document. So this seems like it would be too complex and a waste of time and money to be a scheme when you wouldn’t even get full reimbursement.
So with all that being said, and assuming the farm owner is telling the truth, what do we think is the reason for these bald eagles to be killing these sheep?
Here is a link to the article that has the most of the information that is in the other articles and in the most consolidated and easy to read form. AP, The New York Post, Fox, The Hill, and other news sources also have stories on this. They are easy to find on google.