Buzzards

Do you have a favorite bird? There are many fascinating birds you could choose from, but the vulture is probably not a common answer. You encounter vultures quite often, as they are the birds on the side of the road eating the unfortunate animal that didn’t make it across. It’s easy to see why people do not favor the bald-headed bird that is eating decaying animals. Yuck!

However, it might be time you changed your opinion of the vulture. The world would look different without them — and not in a good way. Let’s learn about what makes vultures special. You won’t look at them the same again.

Vultures Alter Your World

Every living thing has a life cycle. When wild animals die, they leave behind body mass that does not stay fresh for long. Many animals will not eat decaying meat, but vultures love it. Vultures fly high in the air and use thermal scanning to detect dead or dying animals. When a meal is found, the vultures come en masse to feed on the animal’s body. If we did not have vultures, dead animals would take much longer to disappear through decompostion. This would mean you would come across decaying animals all the time in the wild, and that is not very pleasant.

Vulture Adaptations

All living things have evolved to fill a certain niche in an ecosystem. If all birds ate the same food, most of them would starve because there would not be enough to go around. Instead, some birds eat seeds, some birds eat flying insects, some eat ground insects, some drink nectar and the vulture eats decaying meat. This is how an ecosystem can support so many different birds.

Eating decaying meat does come with some problems. The vulture often inserts its entire head inside the decaying animal to find the food it wants. If the vulture’s head and neck were covered with feathers like most birds, they would not look very pretty after feeding. It would be hard to clean off all the blood and other liquids sticking to the feathers. Instead, most vultures have a nearly bald head and neck that are easier to clean.

Another adaptation is the vulture’s stomach. If you eat anything spoiled, you likely will get sick. However, vultures have very strong stomach acid that kills bacteria and other toxins. Even if the animal a vulture eats died from an illness, the vulture will not be harmed.

Ready for this adaptation? Vulture pee! Vultures spend much of their day standing in rotting animals. Some vultures, such as turkey vultures — our most common vulture — pee on their legs often. Scientists believe that the vultures do this to disinfect their legs. The vulture urine kills the bacteria from the dead animal.

Dangerous Vulture Decline

Vultures are not in immediate danger in the United States, but in other parts of the world, they are being destroyed on purpose. In Africa, it is believed that 95 percent of the vulture population has been wiped out by illegal killings.

Africa has a big poaching problem; Poaching is the illegal killing of large animals such as lions, elephants, rhinos and others. Once the poachers take what they want, they leave the rest of the giant animal to rot. Vultures are attracted to the dead animal by the hundreds, which the poachers worry would attract officials to discover their operation. Therefore, poachers poison their prey. Just one poisoned carcass can kill hundreds of these beneficial birds.

Many people would not think the loss of vultures would make much of a difference, but scientists believe that large animals only consume about 36 percent of dead animal matter in Africa. In the United States, that number is even smaller. The rest is eaten and broken down by vultures, bacteria, maggots and other insects.

So while vultures might seem like a disgusting bird to the untrained eye, your world would be a lot more disgusting without these incredibly beneficial birds.