Unique facts about vultures & their importance in an ecosystem

✅WHAT IS A VULTURE? It’s a bird of prey that scavenges for its food, meaning that it searches the ground for animal carcasses to eat. Typically, these carcasses are what is left uneaten from other predators.

Vultures are often overlooked as lowly scavengers. However, they are a key component to maintaining healthy ecosystems.

Think about this; what kind of odour would exist in a wildlife park if there weren’t scavengers like vultures? You have the best answer!

✅SCIENTIFIC NAME:

♦EGYPTIAN VULTURE: NEOPHRON PERCNOPTERUS;

♦HOODED VULTURE: NECROSYRTES MONACHUS;

♦WHITE-BACKED VULTURE: GYPS AFRICANUS;

♦RÜPPELL’S VULTURE: GYPS REUPPELLI

✅LIFE SPAN: UP TO 20 YEARS IN THE WILD; UP TO 37 IN CAPTIVITY

✅INCUBATION: 30 TO 50 DAYS

✅WEIGHT: 1.5 TO 11 KILOGRAMS (3 TO 24 POUNDS)

✅HABITAT: MOUNTAINS, SAVANNA, WOODLANDS, DESERT

UNIQUE FACTS & IIMPORTANCE OF VULTURES:

Because of their role as nature’s garbage disposers, vultures are able to keep the environment clean.

✅By consuming the carcasses of diseased animals, vultures prevent the spread of life-threatening diseases such as rabies and anthrax among animals and humans.

✅Vultures prevent Poaching: Vultures are attracted to the remains and fly in circles around the ground where it has been left behind. Authorities are able to track recent instances of illegal hunting by following these scavenger birds and taking note of where they are circling.

✅In Tibetan plateau, vultures are part of traditional funeral customs. In this culture, people are not buried after death as a means of controlling preventable infectious diseases. Instead, the dead are laid to rest in the sky.

✅A group of vultures is called a venue, and when circling the air, a group of vultures is called a kettle.

✅Most vulture species mate for life.

✅There are 23 species of “vultures”: 16 Old World vultures found in Africa, Asia, and Europe, and seven New World vultures (including the two condors) found in the Americas. (A list of vulture species is provided below.)

✅Old World and New World vultures are actually not closely related. However, because both groups perform highly specialized functions, they have developed similar biological traits.

✅Old World vultures do not have a good sense of smell – they rely exclusively on incredible eyesight to locate food – a soaring vulture can spot a 3-foot animal carcass from 4 miles away.

✅Several species of New World vultures have a good sense of smell, unusual for raptors.

✅The Rueppell’s griffon vulture is the world’s highest flying bird. In 1973, one collided with an airplane off the Ivory Coast; at the time, the plane was flying at 37,000 feet.

✅Vultures can eat up to 20 percent of their own body weight in one sitting.

✅Vultures are equipped with a digestive system that contains special acids that will dissolve anthrax, botulism, and cholera bacteria.

✅Vultures do not go after healthy prey, but will attack wounded and dying animals.

✅New World vultures have the unusual habit of urohydrosis — defecating on their legs to cool them by evaporation.

✅The bald, or lightly-feathered, head is specially designed to stay clean even when confronted with blood and bodily fluids present in the carcasses. Any remaining germs are baked off by the sun.

✅The vomit of a vulture, followed by the action of flying away, is the most common defensive tactic against an adversary. If the food is relatively undigested, the predator is rewarded with a free meal. If the food is mostly digested, the foul-smelling substance acts as a deterrent and will sting the eyes of a predator if it lands in their face.

✅Most vultures are social and several species can often be seen feeding together on the same carcass.

✅One of the few animals to use tools, Egyptian vultures use rocks to break open ostrich eggs