Bearded Vulture Diet
The bearded vulture is the only known vertebrate whose diet consists almost exclusively 70 to 90 percent of bone.
Bearded vulture diet. A bearded vulture swallows a big bone. It is a close relative of the egyptian vulture. Updated october 2 2018. Its beak is specialised to feed this way and it can swallow.
Lammergeier in german means lamb vulture. This unique vulture s diet consists of between 70 and 90 percent bone. There are an estimated 10 000 pairs of wild bearded vultures in the world. The bearded vulture is an umbrella species so that the work we do in improving the mountain habitat for the bearded vulture benefits other mountain wildlife too such as black grouse golden.
The vulture is a wild hatched bird that originates from either the alps or the pyrenees according to josé tavares the director of the vulture conservation foundation which runs a bearded. We compared methods of assessing the diet of the bearded vulture gypaetus barbatus during the nestling period in the pyrenees northeast spain we determined diet from direct observations of food items delivered to the nest recent prey remains present in the nest remains collected in the nests after fledging and remains collected in the ossuaries bone breaking sites. They have a flexible o esophagus allowing them to swallow bones whole and with a stomach acid ph of 1 the bones are dissolved in a matter of hours. Why the bearded vulture s diet is the strangest among all birds why the bearded vulture s diet is the strangest among all birds.
By francesco veronesi from italy cc by sa 2 0 via wikimedia commons want to learn more about birds. Diet the bearded vulture is the only animal that feeds almost exclusively on bone 70 90. However it usually ignores the meat of the carcasses preferring to go after the bone marrow. It lives and breeds on crags in high mountains in southern europe the caucasus 6 7 8 africa 9 the indian subcontinent and tibet laying one or two eggs in mid winter that hatch at the beginning of spring.
In 1625 the mughal emperor jahangir ordered the crop of a bearded vulture checked to confirm that it does indeed feed almost exclusively on bones. An old world vulture it forms a minor line of the accipitridae with the egyptian vulture its closest living relative they are not much more closely related to the old world vultures proper than to hawks. The bird throws the larger bones from a height on to rocky slopes in order to break them and immediately descends after them in a characteristic spiral. The bearded vulture gypaetus barbatus also known as the lammergeier or lammergeyer is a bird of prey it is the only member of the genus gypaetus.