While they generally target prey less than 12 inches long, occasionally an osprey catches something a bit larger than it can handle. Take a situation last month in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina<\/a>. There, a man playing through a disc golf course witnessed an osprey drop a sizable hammerhead shark<\/a> after being beset by crows.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not uncommon to see an osprey carrying something, but you take note because it\u2019s still really cool to see,\u201d Jonathan Marlowe told Garden & Gun<\/a> magazine.<\/p>\n As it flew above the course\u2019s 11th hole, a pair of crows attacked the osprey in what\u2019s known as \u201cmobbing<\/a>.\u201d The aggressive, cooperative technique is utilized by birds to protect territory against predators during breeding season. Although the raptor escaped unscathed, it gave up its meal during evasive maneuvers.<\/p>\n Marlowe initially thought the hawk was carrying a \u201crandom fish\u201d likely retrieved from the nearby Atlantic Ocean\u2014but he was surprised by what he found after walking over to examine the lost prey.<\/p>\n \u201cWe couldn\u2019t believe it and kept asking ourselves, \u2018did that really just happen?’\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The osprey had given up a hammerhead shark<\/a>. Known for its distinctive head shape called a cephalofoil, there are 10 known species<\/a> around the world, with several populating the southern US coasts along the Atlantic. Three species are known to roam the waters near South Carolina according to the state\u2019s Department of Natural Resources<\/a>\u2014the bonnethead (Sphyrna tiburo), scalloped hammerhead (Sphyrna lewini), and great hammerhead (Sphyrna mokarran). As LiveScience<\/a> notes, a new, rare species known as the Carolina hammerhead<\/a> (Sphyrna gilbert) was also discovered around the same region in 2013.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear which species plopped onto the disc golf course. Instead of retrieving it, Marlowe opted to leave it where it lay just in case the osprey returned for its meal.<\/p>\n \t\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t More deals, reviews, and buying guides<\/p>\n The PopSci team has tested hundreds of products and spent thousands of hours trying to find the best gear and gadgets you can buy.<\/p>\n \t\u00a0<\/p>\n Andrew Paul is a staff writer for Popular Science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get the Popular Science daily newsletter\ud83d\udca1 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. The osprey didn\u2019t get…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,12,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-174274","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114661868514793421","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1749601148_258_ps-ggs.jpg\")
\t\t\t<\/p>\n