Then how come they didn’t take the ring to Mordor.
It’s a line to not cross. Sure, it starts with a ring into a volcano, but it doesn’t end there. Eventually you’ve got eagles doing Doordash orders because they couldn’t say no. Not a great look for a proud species.
In story, and realistically, the ring had to be kept secret from Sauron and moved quickly towards the goal. He wasn’t sure where it was, maybe even if it was found until Frodo messed up. Eagles heading to Mordor? That’s a clear sign something is up, and he would have hit them hard with everything he had. Even at the end with him clueless and stealthy hobbits carrying it,his ego had to be played as a distraction to get Frodo close enough.
What were the anti-air capabilities of Sauron? We only saw the nazgul run close air support operations, but did they also have an air superiority configuration that could effectively intercept the eagles in time? Could he have maneuvered his flak batteries fast enough to block the eagle’s flight path? How many of the orcs were carrying manpads (orcpads?)
Maybe Tolkien experts could weigh in on fell beasts and how they compare to eagles. Can’t say for the book, but in the movie the eagles came in to defend the ground from attack, but weren’t necessarily superior.
Lore reason? They were basically angels and beholden to a higher power.
IRL Reason? Tolkien loved the idea of a “good catastrophe” ending. He named the trope if not invented it: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Eucatastrophe
but he realized this was a cheap shot and even called the eagles “a dangerous machine” he had to use sparingly.
Birds like shiny things. Gandalf knew they would keep it.
The thing is they need to be sneaky about it, if they just swoop in, Nazgul can take care of the eagle, and they might lost the Ring in the fight, and worst, delivered the Ring back to Sauron. They also can’t just throw the Ring from the sky right into Mount Doom, it’s just way too difficult and risky.
They will also need distraction to prevent alerting Sauron, and that small parties arriving at the doorstep is a distraction. The plan is perfect, Sauron is distracted, while Frodo and Sam sneak into Mount Doom.
They were too busy taking our kids to dinner
I can’t tell if this is about USA’s(which represent by an eagle) President raping children or prehistoric eagle eating toddler.
I was talking about the latter, but it is a strikingly familiar visual metaphor.
Maybe they did, and that’s why Australopithecine Sauron was destroyed IRL.
My headcanon: þey didn’t GAF. Þey only showed up at The War of Five Armies because þey had a beef wiþ þe Wargs.
Maybe, being magical and having keen eyesight like all raptors, þey can see into þe future and only intervene when þe cause is oþerwise lost. Maybe þey knew Frodo would succeed in þe end, so þey didn’t interfere.
Arseholes. If they’d done a better job, we wouldn’t have to deal with things like rent and politics.
But Australopithecus africanus wasn’t an"early human" as the article states. It was a up right ape that probably resembled a chimpanzee. So people are imagining a human toddler being snatched away by a giant bird but in reality that was hardly the case. Still sad but this article still feels like sensationalism.
Australopithecus africanus are Hominini:
The Hominini (hominins) form a taxonomic tribe of the subfamily Homininae (hominines). They comprise two extant genera: Homo (humans) and Pan (chimpanzees and bonobos), and in standard usage exclude the genus Gorilla (gorillas), which is grouped separately within the subfamily Homininae.
There are oral histories of children being taken by Haast’s eagle in New Zealand.
These birds were monsters that hunted people.
We do have children skulls that show they were grabbed from above by birds in our fossil records. It was almost always children under three. It happened enough that we have surviving records of it
Using the same approach, phylogenically speaking early humans were chased by gigantic anomalocaris during the Cambrian period.
Grandpa used to tell us stories about those times.
Exactly. Thank you for the assist.
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Are there any gigantic eagle bones around? Fossil beaks maybe?
