The eagle that was fatally shot by a game warden last weekend in Norway after attacking a toddler had previously attacked several people, Norwegian authorities said today, citing the “abnormal behavior” of the predator, which may be due to illegal captive breeding.

On September 7, this golden eagle had pounced on a 20-month-old baby girl playing on the family’s farm in Orkland, central Norway.

The girl’s mother and a neighbor struggled to fend off the predator before it was shot dead by a game warden.

“The eagle appeared out of nowhere and grabbed our little girl, fell on top of her“, said the father of the little girl, who had to get stitches in the back of her head.

After this attack, the Norwegian media reported several similar incidents that had occurred recently, and until then very rarely, in different parts of the country.

Birdlife Norge (Norwegian Ornithological Society) ornithologist Alv Otar Folkestad had spoken of “a completely unprecedented behavior“.

“You won’t find anything on this subject in the literature“, he had stated on the radio and television network NRK.

After examining photographs, the Norwegian Environment Agency today concluded that three incidents, including the one involving the little girl, were definitely caused by the same eagle.

None of the people who were victims of the attacks, which took place between September 3 and 7, were seriously injured.

“It is completely unheard of to see such clashes between golden eagles and humans, such as those observed in several parts of Norway in recent weeks“, commented an official of the Directorate, Suzanne Hansen.

“We are not aware of similar incidents, neither in Norway nor abroad. The eagle that was killed had very strange behavior and was not afraid of people“, he added in a statement.

Several researchers have suggested that humans may have fed the eagle.

Without drawing any definitive conclusions, Hansen noted that “this behavior is similar to the behavior we see in birds raised in captivity.”

“To this day we have no other version that explains the abnormal behavior of the eagle“, he stated.

In Norway, it is forbidden to capture or breed wild animals in a domestic environment.

The royal eagleswhich live in pairs in a territory they appropriate, are the kingdom’s second largest predators after sea eagles.

The female weighs an average of 5 kg and when she spreads her wings reaches 2.2 meters, compared to almost 4 kg and two meters for the male.