On Monday, we learned that the Dutch police are training eagles to attack illegal drones. Awesome. We love birds of prey. The animal kingdom contains a dizzying number of species, but when it comes to fetching a flying object out of the sky, raptors are the only logical choice. Bats are too hard to train, and too small to take out a drone (unless you can convince a colony of them to kamikaze into it, but we’re running low on bats as it is). Parrots are smart enough, but they don’t have that killer instinct. Big cats could do it, but once the drone is more than 20 feet off the ground, cats can’t do anything but pace fecklessly.

Birds of prey have the instincts. And talons. And people have been training them to hunt for thousands of years. So if we wanted to do it, which members of the raptor flock would be be?

To find out, we sought out the opinions of two veteran raptor researchers: Thomas Erdman, curator of the Richter Museum of Natural History, and David Bird, Ph.D, emeritus professor of wildlife biology at McGill University. Each has four-plus decades of experience working with birds of prey; Dr. Bird also has nearly a decade’s experience working with drones. (Note: That’s his real name. Seriously.) Between the two men, we were able to put together a list of five of the most badass birds stalking the North American continent that’d easily be trained to take down drones.

As it turns out, raptors are already more than happy to take on drones—or other flying mechanical objects—all by themselves. Both researchers say they’ve had experiences where birds of prey have attacked UAVs or aircraft they’ve been using to try and study the animals, and YouTube is filled with clips of hawks, ospreys and eagles going after buzzy quadcopters and the like.

“They respond to things up in the air,” Erdman says. “If you [fly a drone] in their territory, you will probably get a response.”

That said, before we dive in: Both Bird and Erdman came down strongly against the idea of actually using raptors to fight drones, as the spinning propellers would likely inflict severe injuries on the animals.

“It’s a recipe for disaster for the birds,” Dr. Bird says. “It’s just inevitable that birds are gonna have their legs hacked up by this.”

But, hey, hyperbole!

Golden Eagle