For example, a peregrine going after ducks,
After looking at this picture, I think a duck could fly faster if it flew backwards.
You reminded me of a shadow study done sometime before 1959... I found the following
quote:
In The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (New York: Viking, 1959), Joseph Campbell recounts a curious phenomenon of animal behavior. Newly hatched chickens, bits of egg-shells still clinging to their tails, will dart for cover when a hawk flies overhead: yet they remain unaffected by other birds. Furthermore, a wooden model of a hawk, drawn forward along a wire above their coop, will send them scurrying (if the model is pulled backward, however, there is no response)
If I remember correctly, the wooden model going forward threw a shadow that looked like a raptor, and got a huge defensive response; going backward, it threw a shadow that looked like a duck and got no response...
Animal transformers... in addition to speeding up, it change species if it flies backwards? A 'duck hawk' being pursued by a 'hawk' duck?