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  • Hey it's me Destin. Welcome to Smarter Every Day. So today we are

  • getting ready for the Iron Bowl. We're at Jordan-Hare Stadium before anybody else is here

  • and we are going to practice with the Eagles. For every

  • Auburn game the eagle flies around and hits the field and everybody screams War Eagle, which is

  • pretty awesome, except that I'm an Alabama fan. But anyway, we're gonna

  • partner together on this academic endeavour and see what we can learn. Welcome to Smarter Every Day.

  • [music]

  • Alright, so we are here on the field

  • at Jordan-Hare Stadium with Marianne Hudson, and she is in charge

  • of Spirit and Nova, and she's gonna show us what she does before the game

  • and during the game. -That's right, we practice with these birds almost every day

  • here in the stadium so, a lot of folks don't realise that we spend a lot of time here in Jordan-Hare Stadium

  • so the birds are used to getting fed here. This is where they get their breakfast

  • almost every morning. So on game day, we bring the birds out here

  • the only difference is, there are 87000 people watching us, but for the

  • birds, it's just routine. (Destin) OK, so for the Ironbowl this is the dinner plate?

  • -That's right. What the bird knows is that every time he touches this lure he gets fed.

  • The other side again gives the date and the competitors,

  • and so when the bird touches this lure, he gets some food.

  • (Destin) So where do we put it? Do you put it out there and.. just drag it across? -That's right. What we do is

  • the bird looks for us, and he knows that either myself or my partner Roy

  • is gonna have this in our hands, and when he touches it he gets the food reward so

  • he's looking for us, and he's waiting for us to produce this, and we usually try to drop it

  • near the 50, cause that is our tradition.

  • [music]

  • OK one question I've alwas had is

  • what happens if the eagle just decides to leave the stadium? I mean that could happen right? They're

  • animals, they get to make their own mind up. Well, the people here at Auburn University

  • have thought about that. So what do you have here? -Every time we fly any of our birds

  • free, whether it's the smallest owl or the largest eagle, we clip

  • a telemetry unit to them. It's a tracking device. We have a receiver

  • that reads the signal from the transmitter when it's turned on. (Destin) What's he got here?

  • (Destin) So that's it huh? -And we have a seat for that transmitter permenantly

  • glued to the eagle's tail. (Male) There's the tail mount.

  • Little clips.. in there.

  • Secured, it's good to fly. (Destin) And can the bird even tell that it has the transmitter on?

  • Nope. It's very light weight. He doesn't know it's there. It's out of the

  • way in case he were to escape, and he wouldn't be tangled in anything.

  • (Destin) It's actually in the slipstream too so there's not a lot of drag in that position aerodynamically.

  • That's right so it just blends in with everything else, his general aerodynamic shape

  • and doesn't hinder him at all.

  • So now you know how to track your pet eagle.

  • Alright I'm here with Clay. We're in Jordan-Hare Stadium before the game. You can

  • see they're painting the lines for the Ironbowl. Check it out.

  • They're not the only people that have to get ready for the Ironbowl. Aah the bird..

  • The eagle slapped me.

  • I've been slapped several times by this eagle because I'm wearing

  • crimson and it doesn't like it. Roll tide.

  • -War eagle. Whatever.

  • I think if you really asked me about it, legitimately

  • that the tiger is our mascot, but we have

  • now obviously the golden eagle, which you know

  • it sends our team to victory, it's our rally cry. (Destin) I'm just gonna be honest with you

  • it makes no sense to me to carry an eagle around with a tiger on top of it. 60

  • That doesn't make sense man.

  • It's aah it worked all last season [laughs]

  • Bald eagle through the legs.

  • We tried to investigate how to get an elephant to fly around our stadium before the games but we couldn't get the

  • jet engines.. operation dumbo drop yeah..

  • we couldn't get Bear Bryant to figure it out for us.

  • Did your eagle just slap me?

  • Yeah you came to talk about Alabama.. in his stadium.

  • And you're wearing crimson.

  • [ Captions by Andrew Jackson ]

  • Captioning in different languages welcome. Please contact Destin if you can help.

Hey it's me Destin. Welcome to Smarter Every Day. So today we are

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