• _stranger_@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Lore reason? They were basically angels and beholden to a higher power.

      IRL Reason? Tolkien loved the idea of a “good catastrophe” ending. He named the trope if not invented it: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Eucatastrophe

      but he realized this was a cheap shot and even called the eagles “a dangerous machine” he had to use sparingly.

    • Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ@piefed.zip
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      12 days ago

      My headcanon: þey didn’t GAF. Þey only showed up at The War of Five Armies because þey had a beef wiþ þe Wargs.

      Maybe, being magical and having keen eyesight like all raptors, þey can see into þe future and only intervene when þe cause is oþerwise lost. Maybe þey knew Frodo would succeed in þe end, so þey didn’t interfere.

    • Annoyed_🦀 @lemmy.zip
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      12 days ago

      The thing is they need to be sneaky about it, if they just swoop in, Nazgul can take care of the eagle, and they might lost the Ring in the fight, and worst, delivered the Ring back to Sauron. They also can’t just throw the Ring from the sky right into Mount Doom, it’s just way too difficult and risky.

      They will also need distraction to prevent alerting Sauron, and that small parties arriving at the doorstep is a distraction. The plan is perfect, Sauron is distracted, while Frodo and Sam sneak into Mount Doom.

  • ieightpi@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    But Australopithecus africanus wasn’t an"early human" as the article states. It was a up right ape that probably resembled a chimpanzee. So people are imagining a human toddler being snatched away by a giant bird but in reality that was hardly the case. Still sad but this article still feels like sensationalism.

    • mad_asshatter@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Australopithecus africanus are Hominini:

      The Hominini (hominins) form a taxonomic tribe of the subfamily Homininae (hominines). They comprise two extant genera: Homo (humans) and Pan (chimpanzees and bonobos), and in standard usage exclude the genus Gorilla (gorillas), which is grouped separately within the subfamily Homininae.

    • massive_bereavement@fedia.io
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      12 days ago

      Using the same approach, phylogenically speaking early humans were chased by gigantic anomalocaris during the Cambrian period.

    • CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      We do have children skulls that show they were grabbed from above by birds in our fossil records. It was almost always children under three. It happened enough that we have surviving records of it