Unfortunately, this ability does come with certain downfalls. Many animals carry certain diseases that are passed to them from other animals either above or below them in the food chain. Because the eagle is at, or near, the top, the eagle often contracts many toxic diseases through the prey that it eats.
However, eagles are able to live on in large quantities through their fierce ability to hunt successfully in a range of environments and survive in some of the world’s most brutal environments. Eagles are particularly opportunistic in this sense, and one perfect example of this is something that one can sometimes see on nature shows: the fish swoop. This is when the eagle will hover over a sea, river or lake and, at the right moment, swoop down and capture a fish swimming by and fly off with it. This level of opportunism also extends to certain scavenging traits whereby they feast upon the remains left behind by other creatures. Naturally, an eagle is not going to win a fight with an antelope, but wherever there is an antelope corpse, an eagle will surely be there to prey upon the remains.
The eagle is also able to hunt in the sky; taking on other birds is something that eagles do well and will typically time an attack to their advantage. They will calculate the best odds of winning a tasty prize in the air, and then go in for the kill. This form of attack is somewhat more strenuous than the scavenging that the eagle is known for, but it is a somewhat more productive way of being fed.
Eagles are known to attack dozens of times a day, and not all of these attacks result in a successful feeding. This is not to say that the eagle is not a fearsome predator, but more that it is a relentless predator. Despite this seemingly constant rate of attack, the eagle does find time to rest and recharge, and in fact 80% of its time is spent quietly resting away from the eye of other predators, offering its prey a brief chance to catch its breath.
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