Why Is This Golden Eagle Getting a Massage?

Thoughts that a Golden Eagle might have while getting a massage:

You can rub all you want—a genie is not coming out of my cloaca.

Is this too . . . undignified? Whatever. It’ll be better once BBC adds the David Attenborough narration. Hope my ex is watching.

I’ve had these giant knots in my muscles ever since the lemming-stock crash of 2012.

Jeeves, cancel all my calls and book me a cryotherapy session. My scapulars are looking puffy.

Ice Cube was right. A bird in the hand IS worth more than a Bush.

Okay, nobody knows what this bird is really thinking. But it appears to be enjoying this thorough massage from its trainer at L’espieAgle, a Japanese non-profit foundation focused on educating people about Golden Eagles. 

Though the Golden Eagle has one of the widest ranges of any raptor on the planet and global populations are stable, there are only about 500 individuals left in Japan, mostly due to poor habitat management in the country. In the past 30 years many of the forests where eagles live have become overgrown, making it difficult for them to track down prey. Nest abandonment is also high, because of human disturbances, and the eagles have had less breeding success in recent years; the captive five-month-old in the video, which was filmed in 2013, is a rare surviving juvenile. When it’s not getting a rubdown, the young bird is being trained to hunt—the thick ropes cuffed to its legs act like resistance bands, helping the eagle develop the muscles needed for chasing prey.

When the video was posted, some anxious YouTube commenters worried that those squeaky little barks signaled that the bird was in distress. But those sounds are actually perfectly normal for young Golden Eagles, whose vocalizations resemble that of a Yorkshire Terrier. (Bald Eagles, meanwhile, sound like old-fashioned bike horns.) In fact, a good massage seems to have the same soporific effect on eagles as it does on humans: As L’espieAgle’s wrote in a comment, “He really loves that it makes him go to sleep.” Hope you catch plenty of lemmings in your dreams, buddy.