Haast eagles were the largest eagles  
that we know of in the entire world. 
They had a wingspan up to 2.6 meters wide 
which is pretty massive.
And if it could take down a 200 kilo moa, 
it would probably, quite easily, attack a human.
When you start to reconstruct a bird, it's a bit 
like a forensic examination. 
The first thing we did was come into Te Papa's 
collections and look at some real skeletons of Haast eagles. 
Then you have to work out its anatomy. 
You've got to workout its structure of muscle around it 
and we were really trying to be as accurate as possible 
so it's not exaggerated in any way. 
That's what it is... [laughter] 
The challenges with feathers was finding something that was 
suitable that we could splice together to make the wing feathers look 
realistic because there's no feather in 
existence that's a large enough size to 
get that wing feather. 
This is the first time that all the science has gone into 
making a full-size, feathered model of a
Haast eagle and I think Jake really did a fantastic job. 
I'm a bird geek. I
absolutely love birds, so it's been an
absolute dream to do it and the reaction
I want is for people to believe it's real.
People are gonna be really
surprised by how enormous it is and our
exhibitions are going to show just how
spectacular they were. 
