What is a vulture?
Vultures are groups of birds that eat carrion (dead animals). These scavengers are known for their bald heads. Not having feathers on the head and neck is a useful adaptation when you feed by shoving your head into a dead animal to scoop out its guts.
Dead animals are full of potential disease carrying pathogens like bacteria. Baldness keeps pathogens from sticking to vultures’ heads, making them less likely to catch diseases from their food.
Where do vultures live?
Vultures live on all continents but Australia and Antarctica. There are more than 20 species of vultures across Asia, Africa, Europe, and North, and South America. Scientists are still working out exactly how many vultures there are. Some vultures that were once thought to be one species may actually be two.
When scientists started exploring vulture evolution using genetic analysis they got a surprise. People thought that all vultures were closely related to each other, but genetics revealed that Old World vultures (found in Africa, Asia, and Europe) and New World vultures (found in North and South America) are actually not closely related to each other.
Each vulture group comes from a different ancestor. Old World vultures are most closely related to hawks and eagles. And New World vultures are most closely related to storks.
What have vultures done for us lately?
Vultures are nature’s carcass clean-up crew. Vultures help clean up dead animals. This is good for us humans, and it is also good for our ecosystems. Vulture activity helps to break down dead animal tissues into nutrients. The nutrients go back into soil to be used by plants and fungi at the base of food chains.
Vultures also help eliminate disease from ecosystems by removing potentially deadly pathogens that can infect carcasses.
In India there was massive death of vultures in the early 21st century. The affected vultures were eating cattle carcasses containing a veterinary medicine that turned out to make vultures sick.
Without the vultures around to clean up dead animals, diseases and pests began to spread. This affected the environment in many ways. It also impacted on humans. Dead animals were eaten instead by feral dogs (dogs living on their own in the wild). More food led to more feral dogs, and more feral dogs led to outbreaks of rabies in humans. If vultures had been around to do their jobs, they would have helped control pests, and keep diseases like rabies from spreading.
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By Mongabay Kids
