The existence of birds hunting with fire is confirmed

It is thought that it is possible to handle fire only for animals with high intelligence such as humans and some monkeys, but a research presentation that northern Australia has three kinds of birds hunting with fire It has been.

Intentional Fire-Spreading by "Firehawk" Raptors in Northern Australia | Journal of Ethnobiology
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2993/0278-0771-37.4.700

Australian raptors start fires to flush out prey | Cosmos
https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/australian-raptors-start-fires-to-flush-out-prey

Three types of birds of prey, "Milvus migrans (Tobi)", "Haliastur sphenurus (Fenakitobi)" and "Falco berigora (Chairo Fayebusa)" that live in northern Australia handle fire in order to expel small prey animals A paper to clarify the issue was announced. According to researchers, birds carry the branches with fire, carry them down, spread to the grass and spread the fire, to hunt small mammals, lizards and insects living in the area to escape, then hunt. It is confirmed that birds use fire for hunting alone and collectively.


In the Northern Territory of Australia, the existence of "a bird carrying a fire" has been passed down since ancient times, and some Aborigines have tribes that have copies of birds carrying fire in traditional ceremonies . Birds carrying fire are widely known in the northern part of Australia's East Coast to the West Coast. In Australia its existence seems to have been widely known. Ornithologist Bob Gosford told the Aboriginal group of the Northern Territory about this discovery and most of the group seemed to admit satisfactorily the findings of discovery.

According to Alex CaseLink of Oxford University, the bird seems to have learned the action, watching that many animals escape when a wildfire etc. occurs. Furthermore, as a result of young birds learning and seeing the act of hunting by using the habits of small animals to escape from fire, it is estimated that hunting using fire is being carried over and over generously .


In Europe it has not been accepted because of the absence of scientific documents in Australian aboriginal tradition on birds that use fire. However, Mr. Case Link points out that this study is very fascinating in that it shows that there are animals using fire that are rarely observed in animals other than humans.

The large-scale fire that occurred in Australia was thought to be caused by human behavior and thunder, but the possibility that the behavior of the bird trying to spread the fire using a branch with fire is the cause Have also been pointed out.