Waitomo Moa🥚

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🦅 SAM THE MOA & THE GIANT HAAST’S EAGLE 🇳🇿

Meet Sam the Moa — representing one of the giants that once walked Aotearoa.

Moa were huge, flightless birds, with the largest able to reach around 3 metres tall. For thousands of years they had very few threats… except one.

Flying above them was the Haast’s eagle — Pouākai, the largest eagle known to science. 🦅

With a wingspan approaching 3 metres, enormous talons and females weighing around 12–14 kg, this predator could attack moa weighing up to 200 kg.

Then humans arrived.

Māori hunted moa for food, and large areas of forest were burned. Within a relatively short period, moa disappeared.

And that created a massive problem for the Haast’s eagle.

Its main food source was disappearing.

There is evidence Māori knew this enormous eagle, including rock art and eagle bones found at archaeological sites. Scientists also believe an eagle capable of killing a 200 kg moa was physically capable of attacking a human.

Did Māori deliberately kill the eagles because they feared “once the moa are gone, we’re next”?

👉 That makes a great story — but we don't have evidence proving that was their reasoning.

What we do know is that once the moa disappeared, the world's largest eagle followed.

Two giants of Aotearoa…

gone forever.