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Discover the WORLD 21st centurv

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Explore the WORLD

09/09/2025

The Wonder of the World: An Eagle That Flew for 20 Years but Never Crossed the Sea, Eventually Dying in Saudi Arabia

For twenty years, scientists tracked the flights of a Steppe Eagle from Russia, after attaching a GPS device to monitor its global movements. The eagle eventually died in Saudi Arabia.

The flight path stunned researchers worldwide. The bird traveled across vast deserts and towering mountains, moving between many countries. Yet, despite all its incredible journeys, it never once dared to fly over the sea.

Instead, the Steppe Eagle chose to circle the earth by land, enduring long migrations across harsh deserts, barren landscapes, and rugged terrain. Over its entire 20-year lifespan, not a single time did it attempt to cross over the sea—even in places where the sea crossing would have been much shorter than the land detour.

Scientists explained that this behavior is linked to the eagle’s reliance on thermal currents—warm air rising from the land—that help the bird soar and conserve energy during long flights. These thermal currents are generated only over land, and they are either absent or extremely rare above the open sea.

That is why, throughout its lifetime and thousands of kilometers of migration, the eagle never once risked flying above the ocean.