Gross, Bald, and Brilliant: Why Vultures Are the Badass Eco-Warriors We Desperately Need

If you think vultures are just creepy birds that circle dead things in Western movies, it is time for a serious rebrand. These bald, scavenging sky-dwellers are actually the ultimate ecosystem clean-up crew, packing superpowers that rival any comic book hero.

Here is why you should be thanking a vulture today.

The Ultimate Clean-Up Crew

Without vultures, the world would be a very smelly, disease-ridden place. They act as nature’s sanitation department, happily hoovering up decaying bodies and stopping horrific outbreaks in their tracks.

• Disease Destroyers: By eating rotting carcasses, vultures eliminate nasty pathogens that would otherwise release botulism, anthrax, and the plague into the environment.
• Carbon Cutters: Their highly efficient carrion-disposal service significantly curbs greenhouse gas emissions that would otherwise waft off rotting animals.
• Binge Eaters with Throat Tupperware: Vultures never know when their next meal is coming and can go up to two weeks without a bite. When they do find food, they gorge themselves, storing leftovers in a throat pouch (called a crop) for a midnight snack or to regurgitate for their chicks later. Yummy!

Iron Stomachs & Bizarre Hygiene

You might think eating rotting, infected meat would lead to a bad time in the bathroom, but vultures are built completely different.

• Battery Acid Bellies: Vultures possess the strongest gastric acid in the animal kingdom. At a pH of just over 0, their “gizzard gravy” is stronger than battery acid and 100 times stronger than human stomach acid. It utterly vaporizes deadly bacteria.
• Bone Melters: For some vultures, 70% to 90% of their diet is straight-up bone. Their legendary stomach acid dissolves the skeleton, turning it into a nutritious soup.
• Built-in Hand Sanitizer (and AC): New World vultures practice urohydrosis, which is a fancy, scientific way of saying they pee and poop down their own legs. As the liquid evaporates, it cools them down. Plus, that highly acidic urine kills any flesh-eating bacteria they picked up while stomping around inside a dead animal.
• Strategic Baldness: There is a very good reason their heads look like wrinkled thumbs. Having no feathers on their head and neck prevents rotting meat and dangerous bacteria from getting tangled in their plumage while they are elbow-deep in a carcass.

Sky-High Superpowers

Vultures are not just sitting around waiting for things to die; they are elite aviators with mind-blowing senses.

• Commercial Airliner Altitudes: The Rüppell’s griffon vulture holds the record for the world’s highest-flying bird, with confirmed sightings up to a staggering 37,000 feet (11,277 meters).
• Professional Gas Detectors: Turkey vultures have such an impeccable sense of smell that natural gas companies actually use them to find pipeline leaks! The gas contains the same chemical emitted by decaying animals, turning these birds into unwitting corporate contractors.
• Telescopic Vision: A vulture’s vision is eight times better than ours. They can spot a three-foot-long carcass from four miles away.
• Lazy, Graceful Flight: Vultures rarely flap their wings. Thanks to massive wing feathers and short tails, they catch warm updrafts called thermals, soaring for hours on end with zero effort. And just because they are circling doesn’t necessarily mean something is dead below—sometimes they just like the view!

Quirky Diets & Vulture Romance

They aren’t all just bone-crushing carrion eaters. Some have very niche tastes, and when it comes to love, they are surprisingly romantic.

• The Hipster Vegan: The palm-nut vulture of coastal central Africa skips the rotting meat almost entirely, preferring to dine on the fruits of raffia and oil palms.
• The Tool User: Egyptian vultures use rocks to smash open tough ostrich eggs.
• The Marrow Miner: Bearded vultures (lammergeiers) love goat bones so much that they drop them from the sky onto rocks to shatter them and get to the delicious marrow inside.
• True Love: When it comes to starting a family, vultures mate for life. Turkey vulture courtship involves a cute, hopping circle dance followed by tandem flying. The male will try to impress his date by swooping past and nearly touching her wingtip—the avian equivalent of flexing at the gym.
• Social Butterflies: By day they soar, and by night they roost together. White-backed vultures chill in groups of 10 or 12, bearded vultures hang out in groups of 25, and Rüppell’s griffons live in massive, wildly noisy colonies of up to 1,000 pairs! Turkey vultures, however, only get social for bedtime, returning to the same giant slumber-party tree year after year.

Reference

https://sandiegozoowildlifealliance.org/story-hub/2019/08/30/8-wow-some-wonders-about-vultures

https://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/vulture

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/facts/vultures

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/nature/article/vultures