their entire hunting strategy is making their bodies into spears. basically they can extend their necks super fast at prey and stab them hard enough to the point they can have a hard time getting their prey off of their beaks by themselves
you can see here in this x ray that one vertebra in their necks is elongated right at the s-curve, and this is what makes them crazy efficient hunters. the elongated vertebra allows them to basically launch their heads at prey incredibly fast where they stab it with their sharp beaks. like any animal herons aren’t going to hesitate to defend themselves if they have do and it would probably suck to get stabbed by a bird. even bitterns can do a lot of damage like this, plus bitterns have a tendency to go for the eyes
also they can and will snatch gophers right out of the ground. they’ll eat pretty much anything they can fit down their throats (which is way bigger than you think. their esophaguses are very elastic)
i’m not saying you should be scared of a heron or anything but people dont realize how much damage they can do
if this guy wants, he can skewer you. remember this
fun fact there’s a pretty good body of work suggesting that azdarchid pterosaurs used essentially the same kind of predation model as herons
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