We humans have it pretty easy when we want to grab a bite to eat.
For us, when our stomach starts rumbling, we can just go to the pantry to see what the snack situation is looking like, and thanks to the evolution of modern technology, we can now have food delivered to our doorsteps.
Animals out in the wild, on the other hand, still have to fight for every meal, and this video below showcases quite the battle for a meal that took place between a bald eagle and a coyote.
In the clip, a bald eagle swoops down onto a carcass that’s being picked at by other eagles and birds. The bald eagle utilizes its incomparable vision to spot the dead animal laying out across the white snow, and dives down to claim it as its own.
When it first lands by the carcass, one of the eagles that had already laid claim to the deceased animal started brawling with the bald eagle that just touched down. The fight is short lived, with the most recently landed eagle gaining the upper hand and clearing pretty much every bird out of the area.
But the bald eagle isn’t the only scavenger that is interested in the free meal. A coyote moves in to where the carcass lies in the snow, and after first sneaking up around it, it then decides to go on the offensive and challenge the bald eagle.
The big bird spars with the coyote for a moment, though it quickly realizes that it doesn’t have the upper hand (or upper talon) in this matchup.
As the coyote snaps its teeth together, the bald eagle relocates to an area far enough way from the coyote, but close enough to where it could get right back to picking at the carcass once the coyote abandoned it.
The footage goes to show you how hard it is for animals to fend for themselves out in the wild, and no matter how much of an “alpha” they might feel like in the animal kingdom, there’s always a bigger and badder predator that can come by and put them in their place.