ImperialDino

Jun 16 2012, 10:58 PM

With the forensic evidence pointing away from their initial suspect - a bobcat - authorities at the National Zoological Park are on the lookout for a cunning red fox, sought in connection with the July 2 murder of Captain, the bald eagle.

Scented lures, traps baited with fish and "camera traps" equipped with heat and motion sensors have been deployed to identify or capture the culprit.

If caught, zoo officials say, the fox will probably face a ride into exile in the custody of National Park Service rangers.

In the days after Captain was found injured and dying in the enclosure he has inhabited for more than 20 years, suspicion fell on a large feline, perhaps a bobcat.

"We found really large, somewhat rounded footprints that looked suggestive of a cat," said Bob King, assistant curator at the National Zoo. The absence of claw prints suggested a feline, which can retract their claws. But the theory soon began to fall apart.

There had never been a report of a bobcat in Rock Creek Park, which surrounds the zoo. And the eagle appeared to have been attacked from behind, losing tail feathers and sustaining bites on the rear and abdomen.

"That's suggestive of a canine. A bobcat would have gone for the head," King said.

Investigators also noted that the eagle's food - a fish - had been bitten clean in half. "Bobcats, or even an eagle, pick at their prey," he said.

The bobcat theory unraveled further when Robert Colona, a biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, identified the paw prints - preserved in casts - as those of a fox, albeit an urban fox with well-worn nails.

The mystery of how a predator could enter the eagle's enclosure was solved when investigators found a section of the cage's 3-by-6-inch steel wire mesh that had been bent to form a 4-by-5-inch opening, easily enough for a fox to slip through.

The bobcat theory finally collapsed when hairs found outside the cage were identified microscopically by Suzanne C. Peurach, a museum specialist at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, as those of Vulpes vulpes - a red fox.

Although a DNA analysis of the hair and a final necropsy report are pending, the zoo's working theory now goes something like this: The fox slipped into the cage in pursuit of Captain's fish dinner and jumped the eagle from behind; a struggle ensued, in which the eagle was fatally injured; he died on Independence Day.

Red foxes have taken out smaller birds before in the zoo's open-air exhibits, King said. Last fall, some avian enclosures were fitted with electrified wires to keep out such predators.

There had been no similar upgrade for Captain's cage because no one had thought that the cage, or a grown eagle, were vulnerable to a fox.

"Now we'll definitely have to take a second look at it," he said.

Pardus

Sep 20 2012, 09:46 PM

is there any pics