Vulture

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For other uses, see Vulture (disambiguation).
Vulture
Temporal range: Miocene – Recent
↓
[1]
Bartgeier Gypaetus barbatus front Richard Bartz.jpg
Lammergeier near Innsbruck, Austria
Coragyps-atratus-001.jpg
Black vulture in Panama
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Animalia
Phylum:
Chordata
Class:
Aves
Families

Accipitridae (Aegypiinae)
Cathartidae

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A vulture is a bird of prey that scavenges on carrion. The Old World vultures include 15 living species native to Europe, Africa, and Asia; New World vultures are restricted to North and South America.[2] A particular characteristic of many vultures is a bald head, devoid of feathers. This bare skin is thought to keep the head clean when feeding, and also plays an important role in thermoregulation.[3]

Vultures have been observed to hunch their bodies and tuck in their heads in the cold, and open their wings and stretch their necks in the heat. They also urinate on themselves as a means of cooling their bodies.[4]

A group of vultures in flight is called a 'kettle', while the term 'committee' refers to a group of vultures resting on the ground or in trees. A group of vultures that are feeding is termed 'wake'.[5]

Old World vultures

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Main article: Old World vultures

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Some members of both the Old and New World vultures have an unfeathered neck and head, shown as radiating heat in this thermographic image
File:Gyps fulvus feeding.jpg
Griffon vultures scavenging a red deer carcass in Spain
Griffon vulture soaring
Vulture preparing to land in Kenya
African hooded vulture in Kruger National Park
File:White-backed vultures eating a dead wildebeest.JPG
A wake of white-backed vultures eating a wildebeest carcass at Maasai Mara
File:Indian vulture (Gyps indicus) Close-up by Shantanu Kuveskar.jpg
Close-up of Indian vulture in India
File:White-rumped vulture (Gyps bengalensis) Flock gathered near carcass Photograph by Shantanu Kuveskar.jpg
Flock of white-rumped vultures in India
Head of a vulture at Mellat Park, Tehran City, Iran

The Old World vultures found in Africa, Asia, and Europe belong to the family Accipitridae, which also includes eagles, kites, buzzards, and hawks. Old World vultures find carcasses exclusively by sight.

The 16 species in 9 genera are:

New World vultures

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Main article: New World vulture

The New World vultures and condors found in warm and temperate areas of the Americas are not closely related to the similar Accipitridae, but belong in the family Cathartidae, which was once considered to be related to the storks. However, recent DNA evidence suggests that they should be included among the Accipitriformes, along with other birds of prey. However, they are still not closely related to the other vultures. Several species have a good sense of smell, unusual for raptors, and are able to smell dead animals from great heights, up to a mile away.

The seven species are:

Feeding

Vultures are scavengers, meaning they eat dead animals. They rarely attack healthy animals, but may kill the wounded or sick. When a carcass has too thick a hide for its beak to open, it waits for a larger scavenger to eat first.[6] Vast numbers have been seen upon battlefields. They gorge themselves when prey is abundant, until their crops bulge, and sit, sleepy or half torpid, to digest their food. These birds do not carry food to their young in their talons but disgorge it from their crops. The mountain-dwelling bearded vulture is the only vertebrate to specialize in eating bones,[7] and does carry bones to the nest for the young, and it hunts some live prey.

Vultures are of great value as scavengers, especially in hot regions. Vulture stomach acid is exceptionally corrosive (pH=1.0[7]), allowing them to safely digest putrid carcasses infected with botulinum toxin, hog cholera bacteria, and anthrax bacteria that would be lethal to other scavengers[8] and remove these bacteria from the environment. New World vultures often vomit when threatened or approached. Contrary to some accounts, they do not "projectile vomit" on their attacker in defense, but to lighten their stomach load to ease take-off. The vomited meal residue may distract a predator, allowing the bird to escape.[9]

New World vultures also urinate straight down their legs; the uric acid kills bacteria accumulated from walking through carcasses, and also acts as evaporative cooling.[10]

Conservation status

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See also: Indian vulture crisis

Vultures in south Asia, mainly in India and Nepal, have declined dramatically since the early 1990s.[11] It has been found that this decline was caused by residues of the veterinary drug Diclofenac in animal carcasses.[12] The government of India has taken very late cognizance of this fact and has banned the drug for animals.[13] However, it may take decades for vultures to come back to their earlier population level, if they ever do: without vultures to pick corpses clean, rabies-carrying dogs have multiplied, feeding on the carrion, and age-old practices like the sky burials of the Parsees are coming to an end, permanently reducing the supply of corpses.[14] The same problem is also seen in Nepal where government has taken some late steps to conserve remaining vultures. Similarly, in Central Africa there has also been efforts to conserve the remaining vultures and bring their population numbers back up. This is largely due to the bushmeat trade, "it is estimated > 1 billion kg of wild animal meat is traded" and vultures take up a large percentage of this bushmeat due to their demand in the fetish market.[15] The substantial drop in vulture populations in the continent of Africa is also said to be the result of both intentional and unintentional poisoning, with one study finding it to be the cause of 61% of the vulture deaths recorded.[16]

The vulture population is threatened across Africa and Eurasia. There are many anthropogenic activities that threaten vultures such as poisoning and wind energy collision mortality.[17]

A recent study in 2016, reported that "of the 22 vulture species, nine are critically endangered, three are endangered, four are near threatened, and six are least concern".[18]

The conservation status of vultures is of particular concern to humans. For example, the decline of vulture populations can lead to increased disease transmission and resource damage, through increased populations of disease vector and pest animal populations that scavenge carcasses opportunistically. Vultures control these pests and disease vectors indirectly through competition for carcasses.[19]

On 20 June 2019, the corpses of 468 white-backed vultures, 17 white-headed vultures, 28 hooded vultures, 14 lappet-faced vultures and 10 cape vultures, altogether 537 vultures, besides 2 tawny eagles, were found in northern Botswana. It is suspected that they died after eating the corpses of 3 elephants that were poisoned by poachers, possibly to avoid detection by the birds, which help rangers to track poaching activity by circling above where there are dead animals.[20][21][22][23]

See also

References

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External links

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