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The (also spelled ) is a monstrous bird in
Māori mythology
Māori mythology and Māori traditions are two major categories into which the remote oral history of New Zealand's Māori may be divided. Māori myths concern fantastic tales relating to the origins of what was the observable world for the pr ...
.
Mythologies
In some of these legends, the Pouākai kills and eats humans. The myth may refer to the real but now extinct Haast's eagle: the largest known eagle species, which was able to kill an adult moa weighing up to , and which potentially had the capability to kill a human.
History
Haast's eagles, which lived only in the east and northwest of New Zealand'sSouth Island
The South Island, also officially named , is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman ...
, did not become extinct until around two hundred years after the arrival of Māori. Eagles are depicted in early rock-shelter paintings in South Canterbury. Large amounts of the eagle's lowland habitat had been destroyed by burning by AD 1350, and it was driven extinct by overhunting, both directly (Haast's eagle bones have been found in Māori archaeological sites) and indirectly: its main prey species, nine species of moa and other large birds such as adzebills, flightless ducks, and flightless geese, were hunted to extinction at the same time.
See also
* Hakawai * Folk memory * Haast's eagleReferences
{{Use dmy dates, date=April 2020 Mythological birds of prey Māori legendary creatures