Dinner at the Vulture Restaurant and Other Adventures in Conservation

June 27, 2016 6:46 PM

What do you get when you set a pile of offal and other assorted body parts in a private game reserve in South Africa? An exclusive dining area for the region's vultures (one photo depicts the menu). Keith L. Bildstein, Ph.D., the Sarkis Acopian Director of Conservation Science at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, blogs about his adventures at The Vulture Chronicles.

Why vulture restaurants?

[The newest addition to the South African team, Dr. Lindy Thompson, a Post-Doc in the Department of Biology in at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal] has initiated studies at several “vulture restaurants” in the region, where human provisioning of hoodies and other vultures with offal and assorted body parts of domestic animals slaughtered at local abattoirs, is helping the birds meet their daily caloric needs. Although such provisioning can disrupt the normal behavior of avian scavengers, human “nutritional assistance” at vulture restaurants provides “clean” food to birds in areas where poachers have been known to purposely lace with poison the carcasses of rhinos and elephants they kill for their horns and tusks. Their intent is to kill the vultures, whose flocking behavior often alerts game rangers of poachers’ activities.

Infrequently updated, but fascinating nonetheless, The Vulture Chronicles contains the best vulture trivia you never thought you'd want to know. For example, did you know that "[t]urkey vultures have the largest nostrils of all New World vultures"? Or that "[e]lectrocution can be a significant cause of mortality, especially for large soaring birds"? Or that Caracaras ripped my seat? (Necessity turns out to be the mother of invention.) It's an interesting bird's-eye view (check out the telemetry backpack!) of an underappreciated bunch of avian scavengers.

posted by MonkeyToes (5 comments total)

Oh be still my beating heart! The turkey vulture is my all-time favorite animal. They are unsung heroes of the natural world, nature's sanitation workers and quintessential examples of evolution. (Their heads have no feathers so's to prevent carrion from getting trapped as they nosh.) Their defense mechanism is to vomit; they pee on their legs to keep cool; their sense of smell is amazing; and they're among the cleanest animals out there. They have such a lousy reputation, but in reality they're magnificent, and have been revered by many cultures for eons. I can't wait to dive into these links! Thank you!

(I'm, um, kind of obsessed with vultures. I have a tattoo of circling vulture silhouettes, and my license plate is TRKYVLTR. The Mr. and I just recently traveled to the Vermont Institute of Natural Science to visit the oldest living TV in captivity—she's in her mid-30s!)
posted by flyingsquirrel at 7:08 PM on June 27, 2016 [13 favorites]

TVs rock.

/birdnerdjoke
posted by rtha at 7:15 PM on June 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

There's a flock of turkey vultures that hang out in the trees around the fake pond near the nursing home my boyfriend's father is at, and his mother was horrified because she was convinced that they could smell death in the air and were lurking, waiting for the elderly nursing home patients to die.

I managed to mostly convince her that that was not the case, and then I showed her the Bird and Moon comic about how awesome turkey vultures are, and she was slightly mollified, but remains suspicious.
posted by ChuraChura at 7:40 PM on June 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Speaking of vulture restaurants, how about the Tower of Silence?
posted by Thorzdad at 7:46 PM on June 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Their intent is to kill the vultures, whose flocking behavior often alerts game rangers of poachers’ activities.

Goddamn, and I didn't think I could hate poachers more.
posted by tavella at 8:03 PM on June 27, 2016 [1 favorite]