I went to the bird park today and learned that the first Saturday in September is International Vulture Awareness Day.
The 2019 theme for the EUROPA stamps is “National Birds”. Spain’s features a bearded vulture.
EUROPA stamps are special stamps issued by European postal administrations/enterprises and bears the official EUROPA logo, a PostEurop registered trademark under the aegis of PostEurop in which Europe is the central theme.
Bearded vultures live in the high mountains of Europe, Asia and Africa. In particular, the Pyrenees has the highest concentration in Europe of these magnificent birds.
The bearded vulture is so called because of the beard formed by black feathers under its beak. This beard gives the vulture its scientific name Gypaetus barbatus which literally means “bearded vulture-eagle”.
The bearded vulture is the only bird in the world to live almost entirely on a diet of bones. They can swallow bones of up to 20cm. Their stomach acid then dissolves the bones and digest the marrow. Its Spanish name, “quebrantahuesos” (bone-breaker) comes from the way it feeds. It carries bones high up into the sky and drops it onto rocks so that it smashes to pieces. Then it lands and swallows the smashed bones. Bad-ass.
Here are some vulture facts I learned today:
Vulture species are divided into 2 groups: Old World + New World. Old World vultures are those in Africa, Asia, and Europe. New World vultures are those in the Americas. Both vulture groups are not genetically related but they share similar biological traits.
6 of the 7 vulture species breeding in South Africa are threatened due to declining food availability, inadvertent poisoning, electrocution, drowning and, more recently, poisoning by poachers (read: humans being dipshits)
Most vulture species mate for life. Also, male and female vultures share incubation duty.
New World vultures defecate on their legs to cool off by evaporation.
Vultures are scavengers. They never hunt for their own food; instead, they feed on predators’ kills or on animals that have already died. This is the reason why poachers are poisoning them — the circling of vultures alert authorities to dead animals that are being poached. Not wanting the authorities to track poaching, these poachers poison the carcass so that the vultures that feed on it die. See: More than 500 endangered vultures die after eating poisoned elephant carcasses (CNN). Apparently, it’s not enough that elephants are going extinct.
The digestive system of a vulture has special acids that can dissolve anthrax, botulism, and cholera bacteria. For context, human stomach acid has a pH of 2. It kills 99% of bacteria in contact with it, but people still get sick and can die if they eat enough contaminated or rotten food. On the other hand, turkey vultures’ stomach acid has a pH slightly above 0, lower than car battery acid and 100X as concentrated as human gastric juice. It can dissolve metal.
Vultures are too heavy to stay airborne for long. They seek out thermal currents that help them maintain flight.
By consuming rotten and diseased meat they decontaminate the carcass, which helps to prevent the spread of disease to both humans and other animals.
The anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac administered to cattle is toxic to vultures who may consume it via dead cows. It damages their kidneys.
Widespread use of diclofenac in south Asian cattle was linked to the deaths of millions of vultures that ate carcasses containing the drug, causing some populations to decline by more than 99% since the 1990s.
Vultures don’t get enough love. 11-year old Donut from the Singapore Jurong Bird Park is sunning herself. She is a New World turkey vulture (Cathartes aura).
Here is Plutarch’s take on vultures:
Plutarch: Roman Questions
A group of vultures is called a kettle, committee or wake: “kettle” refers to vultures in flight, “committee” refers to vultures resting, on the ground or in trees, and “wake” is for a group of vultures that are feeding.
References
“Bearded Vulture and Lammergeier in the Pyrenees and Ordesa NP.” Hike Pyrenees - Walking Holidays in the Spanish Pyrenees, https://www.hikepyrenees.co.uk/bearded-vulture-lammergeier-pyrenees/.
“The Lammergeier.” FCQ, Fundación Para La Conservación Del Quebrantahuesos, 3 Aug. 2018, https://quebrantahuesos.org/the-lammergeier/?lang=en.
Greaney, Dan. “Vultures Have the PH for Public Health.” Redding Record Searchlight, Redding, 26 July 2017, https://www.redding.com/story/life/2017/07/26/vultures-have-ph-public-health/504630001/.
Becker, Rachel. “Cattle Drug Threatens Thousands of Vultures.” Nature, 29 Apr. 2016, doi:10.1038/nature.2016.19839.