#dectective — Public Fediverse posts

Here's my unexpected find for the day. A postgrad student and I were looking for examples of recent articles from the bird journal Emu, to help format a bird song paper we're working on. We went to the journal website, searched on "song", sorted by date, and the second result was this paper: "First documented human attack by a Great Horned Owl in Brazil"!

Published in 2026, the article includes this figure showing photographic proof of the incident. The authors then tracked down the exact individual owl that did the attack, a banded male great horned owl, which was caught and released 7 km away.

"At approximately 20:46 on 16 February 2025, a male Great Horned Owl, assumed by typical hoot, assaulted a nurse as she was distracted on her phone while walking through an access road." "She additionally reported the appearance of a Paraguayan hairy dwarf porcupine *Coendou spinosus* near the fence shortly before the attack, suggesting it may have triggered the incident."

I want to read more bird detective science.

Victor Rodrigues Antonelli & Vagner Cavarzere (2026) First documented
human attack by a Great Horned Owl in Brazil, Emu - Austral Ornithology, 126:3, 343-347. https://doi-org/10.1080/01584197.2026.2678280

#owls #ornithology #BirdsAttack #ecology #NaturalHistory #Brazil #Brasil #Dectective #CrimeScene