Cranes may be , but they know how to defend themselves when threatened. The Red-crowned Crane above is employing a classic defense鈥攑uffing up to look as large as possible鈥攖o fight off the White-tailed Eagle who's after its food.
Last Saturday, a similar drama unfolded after strong winds blew an endangered Red-crowned Crane into a tiger enclosure at the Fuyang Wildlife Park in China鈥檚 Zhejiang province. Go ahead and place bet on who wins in a matchup between one endangered crane and two tigers.
If you put your money on the crane, not the cats, we tip our caps to you鈥攖he crane totally pwned this tiger double-team.
爆料公社鈥檚 field editor Kenn Kaufman explains that since this species is native to eastern Asia鈥擱ussia, China, Korea and Japan, to be exact鈥攈istorically, it would have crossed paths with tigers in the wild.
鈥淭his kind of encounter wouldn't have been likely to happen often, simply because a crane could usually just fly away. However, if the cranes were defending a nest or flightless young, they might have used this kind of behavior,鈥 Kaufman says.
Its Western cousins have been known to employ similar moves. In North America, 鈥淪andhill Cranes confronting predators have been seen displaying the same kinds of behaviors as the crane in the video: partially spreading the wings, standing tall, and lunging forward while stabbing with the bill, sometimes also leaping up and kicking with both feet,鈥 Kaufman says.
The fearless Red-crowned Crane captured in the video made it out of the tiger enclosure safe and sound, but the species itself has been listed as endangered since the 鈥70s. Fewer than 3,000 are left in the wild鈥攖he biggest threat to the ones that remain aren鈥檛 not predators, but the loss of wetland habitat.