Fascinating Facts About Turkey Vultures

In this 10 Minute Tuesday episode of Animals, Nature, and You, explore the fascinating world of turkey vultures, their social behavior, unique adaptations, and vital role in the ecosystem, inspired by Rick Schwartz's personal experiences and insights.

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Learn more about Turkey Vultures:
All About Turkey Vultures
Vultures of the World
Do Birds Have a Sense of Smell? (Audubon)

Find Rick here:
ZoologyRick.com

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Podcast Music: Positive Carefree Folk Pop
Artist: Burgberg
Used with Full Music Standard Lic.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Get this, there is an animal out there that to defend itself won't use sharp claws or hooked beak or even sharp teeth. No, it just projectile vomits all over the perceived threat. I'm Rick Schwartz, educator, public speaker, and all-around curious guy. Over the years, my curiosity and experiences, along with the many people I have worked with, revealed to me we all have a desire to feel connected to the natural world. You're listening to Animals, Nature and You, a podcast that explores a connection between animals, nature, and humans. A podcast that celebrates learning more, following our curiosity, and reconnecting with the natural world. Welcome to another 10-minute Tuesday here on Animals, Nature, and You. And of course, I'm your host, Rick Schwartz, and I'm also very glad you're here. This particular episode was, well, inspired by my conversation with Marco last week. He has a love for birds and vultures especially. And that got me thinking about my vulture experiences. And that also plays into a couple weeks back. I was on a podcast here in San Diego that we discussed. My first love, really quite by accident, my first best buddy in the animal world, outside of my pets, of course, was a turkey vulture. It started back in college. It was quite by accident. It's a longer story than what I'm going to share here. But the very first animal that someone's like, hey, come watch us do a feeding was a turkey vulture. And then that led to another feeding and hanging out more, learning more. One of the things that really blew my mind, the first and foremost, because I didn't know much about birds, and what I did know was mostly from the pet store side of things, which obviously isn't much. So one of the things that really surprised me the most about turkey vultures was the fact that they're a social animal. When we're driving along here in North America, we usually see one or two maybe flying along, soaring. Don't really think of them as a flock. Now, if you're lucky enough to live somewhere where they do roost at night, well, you'll see large numbers coming together. And if you're if you're out in the mornings when the sun is really warming up the earth, creating thermal lifts of air as they swirl up, you'll see the birds in groups catching those thermals and flying up. So you do see them in groups, but to think of them as social, as having relationships, as having a hierarchy within these groups wasn't something that that, you know, I guess it was 18, 19-year-old me had really thought about at the time. In that social group, they can reach numbers of 70 to 80. And I double checked the numbers. I went and looked at some uh some research that supports that. Most of the research shows that they top out around 80 individuals in a group. So here's some fun facts for you, too. You might recognize the term herd, right? It's a herd of buffalo or herd of cows. It's a group, right? Or a flock of birds, a group of birds hanging out together. When it comes to turkey vultures, they have multiple group names. It depends on location. And this can be true for other species as well. So if they're all collectively roosting in a tree or a rock uh cliffside somewhere, that is called a committee of vultures. If you see them down on the ground feeding, looking for food or finding food, either way on the ground, as they're walking along in their silly vulture way, that is a wake of vultures. A wake as in a memorial, or if you're going to a burial ceremony, there's a wake held to mourn the loss of the dead. So you think about it, they're feeding on carrion or a carcass of some sort. It makes sense that term wake was being used. One of my favorite terms is a kettle. A kettle of vultures. So when you see them in the morning hours, usually, it can happen other times of day, but when the sun has sufficiently started to warm the earth, you start to get these subtle rises of air that go up in a swirling pattern. It's a thermal, as they're called. When you're flying, sometimes thermals can create turbulence. Those thermals, the vultures can sense them and feel them, and other birds do as well. And they will fly into them and start to circle to get altitude. Other vultures will see that vulture doing it and go, hey, we're gonna join them from the little group, right? You see them all swirling and churning and swirling and turning in these thermals, it's referred to as a kettle because it reminds sort of the visual of bubbles in a kettle coming up and swirling around. It has sort of that similar movement or look to it. So that's kind of cool. One thing that I do want to point out real quick, my experience with the turkey vulture I got to work with. He loved his people that he accepted. We would take him and fly him back and forth person to person in a large open field so he can get his exercise. One day this happened, and he was flying from the per my co-trainer to me, and he ditched hard to the right under a tree. Like, whoa, what was that about? That's that's not normal. And we got him, he kept looking up at the sky, looking up at the sky, and we you know, didn't think much of it. Started the process of flying him again, and he flew directly back under that tree. We look up and there is a kettle of turkey vultures up there. Most likely because they were coming down, they're swirling down instead of riding a thermal up. They saw him flying back and forth in a low back and forth pattern. That is a visual cue that there must be something there that is of interest. It it must be something to possibly even eat. So the visual these other birds saw was like, oh, there's that guy knows where there's something down there. Let's go check it out. Interestingly enough, though, usually turkey vultures will find things with their sense of smell. Now, when I was coming up in the ranks of learning about animals at the time in the early 90s, it was believed turkey vultures and kiwi and maybe a few other vulture species had any sort of a sense of smell. Other birds, no sense of smell at all, as far as we knew at that time. Kiwi birds, a small little fluff bird, they use their nose to find insects, bugs, and grubs, that sense of smell. Vultures can smell rotting flesh, turkey vultures especially. Other vultures will see them circling and trying to key in where that smell is, and they'll come in too with a visual stimulus. Now we know there are a lot of different birds out there that do have certain senses of smell, could be used for a wide variety of things. We're still learning about it though, because the olfactor sense in birds is unique and different. And of course, you can't just do a sniff test with a bird and go, okay, do you smell marshmallows? Do you smell roses? Do you smell bird seed? So that we're still working on that. But there is more information out there and it's quite interesting. But back to the turkey vulture and their ability to soar, the way their wing structure and body structure is, they can spend a lot of time just with their wings straight out, catching these thermals and winds and soar upwards of, get this, they can reach heights of 5,000 feet. Now, I was doing some more reading about this because I know the California Condor can reach 10,000 feet. It ends up turkey vultures have been clocked around 10,000 feet also, but usually only while migrating. For the most part, they come into North America for the season and then migrate to the very southern parts of North America and into Central and South America where they stay permanently sometimes also. So those migratory processes, they can reach 10,000 feet. And here's the fun fact for you. If you're like me, you do some traveling, you're flying an airplane, that first chime that occurs after takeoff, when they usually say we've reached our our altitude for not cruising altitude, but altitude for, you know, making announcements and all of that. And that is usually that chime is 10,000 feet. So if you happen to be lucky enough to have a window seat, you hear that first chime, look out the window. Imagine being able to fly on your own at that height. The world looks so very different and so very cool. Well, let's get into some other fun facts about these cool birds. The turkey vultures have a bald head as many vulture species do, or at least minimal feathers on the head, and they have bald legs and feet, or no feathers on the legs and feet. A lot of birds don't have feathers on the feet, but they usually have some feathers on their legs. Keep in mind what they eat, they're eating carrion or diseased or dead critters, could be something as small as a bunny rabbit or a lizard, or as big as a moose or a deer. To get the food, they have to step on what they're eating and then use their head to go inside and pull stuff out to get their food. Very icky gross situation. The bald head and bald feet allow them to sun themselves. You might see birds sitting on a post or a tree with their arms, or arms, their wings spread out very far, and they're just going to sit there and let the sun bake them. The sun can actually disinfect most germs off of a surface within 30 to 60 minutes, depending upon the surface and depending upon what it is. But the sun can disinfect things, and vultures take advantage of this. That bald head helps prevent stuff from really getting gooked into the feathers. If they had feathers on their head, it'd be harder to get that area clean. Yeah, bald head gets baked in the sun, even when they're not sitting still, if they're flying around, whatever it might be. So it helps keep them clean. And speaking of germs and gook and icky stuff, this part's what's really cool, and this is why vulture species are so very important. You might look at them go, ooh, that's an ugly bird. I don't care about that. You should care. You should care. Imagine if you put your trash out to the curb every week or to the dumpster or wherever you take your trash, right? And nobody came to pick it up. It would build and grow and build and grow, and eventually you have a big problem. You'd have disease, bacteria, and other things. Now the rains come and start washing some of that stuff downstream or something downstream from someone up above you. You're getting their bacteria and disease and grossness from their trash. Turkey vultures and other vultures are very important. They are the removers of the disease. They can eat carcasses with anthrax, botulism, salmonella, rabies, all of that. Goes into their system, comes out the backside as bird poop. That's it. They have a very highly acidic stomach that then creates a lot of mucus and has a lot of cell turnover so it doesn't eat itself from the inside out, because that's that is really some powerful stuff to be able to destroy all that. Plus, recent studies that have been done, because it is a very curious thing about how they can handle anthrax and botulism and salmonella. There are also a whole microbiome in their intestines that apparently to other animals would be very toxic. But to them, it keeps their things, everything in there keeps a balance that allows them to destroy all of these viruses and bacteria and other problems that would be a huge problem for any other animal. It goes again right through their system, comes out the other side as bird poop. It's pretty cool. Very important to have these animals around. And unfortunately, we see a lot of challenges in the fact that sometimes people put poison out for rabbits or rodents or coyotes or anything. Anything you put poison out for, you create what? A dead animal, carcass. That's food for vultures. Vultures eat that. Their system cannot digest poisons and toxins of that level. Therefore, they start to die off also. We have to be very thoughtful and careful about the food chain. And although, yes, we're trying to get rid of something we might view as a pest, we could end up long-term damaging ourselves because the animals that help keep our environment clean and free of disease will eventually pass away if we're not careful. So food for thought. And last but not least, speaking of food for thought, here's two cool turkey vulture facts that I always love to share. For one, they are outside all the time. They do live in warm climates, sometimes being of the dark colors, of course, you're gonna heat up. How do turkey vultures keep themselves cool? Well, they keep themselves cool and also their legs clean because the legs don't always get in the direct sun. And we talked about the sun baking off the disease. They have highly acidic urates or the white stuff that comes from bird droppings. So birds all come out at once. The urates is the white stuff, which is like our urine, and then the poop. They will purposely urate or lack for a better term, pee down their legs. This does two things. It cleans off the bacteria and other gunk that can be found on their legs and their feet, but also as it evaporates, kind of like perspiration. Perspiration, it keeps them cool. And last but not least, like I mentioned for the hook of this little episode, well, they will eat as much as they can when they find food, like many wild animals do, that gorging behavior, then they'll sit and digest. If something startles them, something's trying to get them, say a coyote tries to get them or something else, they will ver, they will projectile vomit the innards of their guts. Keep in mind they're eating dead stuff that already stinks and is pretty bad. Now it's starting to be digested by this heavily acidic stomach acid. I can tell you firsthand, having experienced a vulture being surprised and deciding that it wanted to empty out its guts, uh, it is it is nasty. It's one of the worst smells out there by far. If you imagine the worst smell you've ever smelled and then like multiply it by a million, you're getting close there. But it works because not only is it a nasty smell that will distract whatever's trying to get them, it also lightens their loads to a couple pumps of the wings and they can lift up into the air safely, much easier than if they were to try and lift everything that they had just eaten. So there you go. There's your fun facts and some other cool facts about turkey vultures. There are about 20, I think a little over 20 species of vultures in the world today. That includes our condors. Oh, the other fun fact: turkey vultures are sometimes confused for condors. When you see them at a great height, you're like, oh, I think that might be a condor. You see the bright red head, the big giant wings, and when we're looking up into the sky, we have a hard time judging distance, how far something is or how big something is. I'll tell you this: if you're in North America, you come across a bird that you might think is a California condor, look on its wings for tags. If there are no tags, it is not a California condor because we know where every California condor is. Every California condor released into the wild is tagged. Every bird hatched in the wild is heavily monitored by scientists, both uh through the zoos and through the uh different federal and state government agencies and even in Mexico as well. And they are brought, they are assessed in the moment for a health check when they're of the right age, and they're given tags also because they're so few. We need to know everything about them and where they are. So that's a the number one way you can tell. Because if there's no tags, it is not a California condor, but you did see a pretty awesome turkey vulture. So you've got that going for you. Okay, we're gonna wrap this up. As always, thank you guys so much for being with me on this curious odyssey that we call Animals Nature and You. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and follow because we have cool episodes coming up, really awesome episodes. Got some great stuff coming up. We have a orangutan conservation coming up later this year. Uh, we've got Dublin Zoo and the conservation work they're doing in Southeast Asia. It's crazy amazing, great conversation talking to somebody about pet therapy, the human-animal connection. So you want to make sure you don't miss any of those episodes as they come up. Of course, every Tuesday we have a 10-minute Tuesday like today, which is sometimes over 10 minutes. And then every Thursday is our interview episodes that go much longer, more in-depth, talking with some great people doing some awesome stuff. Last but not least, if you want to connect with me on Instagram. All the information how to get a hold of me, all the links, and more information about the turkey vulture will be in the show notes of this episode. So, with that, we're gonna wrap it up. I really appreciate you being here. Have a good one, everybody.