Watch This Poor Water Balloon Get Destroyed By a Goshawk in Slow Motion

Last Updated on 03/07/2014 by Chris Gampat

Today, we’d like to reintroduce you to the power of high-speed cameras with a cool video.

Earth Unplugged, a YouTube channel created by BBC Worldwide, recently released a short video of a Goshawk catching its prey midflight. Goshawks are supposedly “aerial cheetahs” so not only are they expert hunters, they also catch their prey at such unbelievable speeds it’s hard to capture their attacks with just a simple video camera.

This high definition footage shows the hawk attacking a yellow water balloon with a piece of bait attached to it in slow motion. It even shows some up-close-and-personal shots of the bird’s long sharp talons tearing through that balloon as if it were a piece of paper. The incredible details they captured of the hunt has made the Gohawk look every inch the menacing hunter that it is – it barely even flinched when the balloon popped!

There’s not a lot of information on how the Earth Unplugged team captured this awesome sequence but PetaPixel thinks they were using a Photron FASTCAM. The sequence itself, which you can watch after the jump, is a snippet from a 6-minute episode they channel released about a year ago entitled “Goshawk Hunts in Slow Motion.”

Via PetaPixel

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