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This POV Video of Falcons Hunting Crows Is Insane

It looks like fighter planes dog fighting, but it's falcons hunting crows.
Screengrab: YouTube

Ever wondered what it's like to dive bomb like the fastest bird in the world? You're looking at it.

This POV video is part of a study published last year in The Journal of Experimental Biology examining the visual cues falcons employ while stalking and killing prey. The researchers strapped head-mounted cameras to two peregrine falcons to observe their flight paths, proximity to prey, and angles of attack. In this instance, the raptors were hunting crow.

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It's an aerial pursuit almost worthy of a dog fight between the Red Baron and allied fighter. The birds fly in and out of figure eights as the crow desperately evades them, the wind hissing from the wings of the falcon fastened with a video camera.

Image: The Journal of Experimental Biology

"The results of pursuit sequences recorded by bird-mounted cameras were analyzed to measure the prey's apparent motion on the video image," the researchers wrote, "its distance with respect to the falcon and the falcon's roll angle versus time. Here, a chase was defined as a sequence in which the falcon initiated a pursuit and pursued the prey until losing it, capturing it or attempting to capture it."

Illustrations of the falcons hunting crows. Image: The Journal of Experimental Biology

The videos were then analyzed with computer simulations and interpreted using "pursuit steering laws observed in insects and mammals."

"A comparison of the empirical and modelling data indicates that falcons use cues due to the apparent motion of prey on the falcon's visual field to track and capture flying prey via a form of motion camouflage," the researchers write, adding that the results are relevant to better comprehending how hunting and fleeing reflexes have co-evolved in the animal world.

This isn't the first time birds of prey have been outfitted with POV cameras to capture a hunt. BBC Earth put cameras on golden eagles in Mongolia, as they hunted wolves for their Shepard owners.

Peregrine falcons: the best animals to strap a GoPro to?