BROADCASTS.com

b'This week we\'ll learn about some vultures from North and South America--some living, some extinct, and one mystery! Thanks to Maureen and Grady for their suggestions!\\n\\nThanks also to Kat White for the Turkey Vulture Song that opens the podcast! If you\'d like to buy her album "In the Eye of the Owl," visit her website at katwhitemusic.com/\\n\\nFurther listening:\\n\\nCritterCast episode 35 Turkey Vultures\\n\\nHow to tell a turkey vulture apart from a black vulture:\\n\\n\\n\\nThe king vulture has a very bright head:\\n\\n\\n\\nThe Andean condor soaring:\\n\\n\\n\\nThe painted vulture:\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\n\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\n\\nWay back in episode 40 we learned about the bearded vulture and some of its close relatives. This was a suggestion from Maureen, and I always meant to revisit vultures so we could learn about more vulture species. Then Grady wanted to know how long buzzards stay in the sky until they come down for food, and why do they soar for so long? That\\u2019s a great question that shows some good observation skills, so let\\u2019s go back to vultures and learn more about them.\\n\\nThose of you listening in Europe may be wondering why I\\u2019m talking about buzzards in a vulture episode. That\\u2019s because we\\u2019re going to learn about new world vultures today, and in North America the general term for a vulture is a buzzard. In Europe, a buzzard is actually a type of eagle.\\n\\nBefore we get into the episode, though, I should mention that the intro music we heard is by Kat White, who was kind enough to let me use a snippet. It\\u2019s from the album \\u201cIn the Eye of the Owl,\\u201d which is all about animals and so much fun I wanted to let everyone know about it. I\\u2019ll put a link in the show notes so you can find out more about the songs.\\n\\nKat also let me know about a turkey vulture named Lord Richard who lives in a park called Lindsay Wildlife Experience in California. Lord Richard just turned 45 years old and got a huge birthday party! So as you can see, vultures can live a long time in captivity, although usually not as long in the wild. Then again, the oldest verified vulture is an Andean condor born in captivity in 1930 who died in 2010 at the age of 79. Andean condors in the wild can live more than 50 years. This makes Lord Richard sound like a positive youngster.\\n\\nNew World vultures are native to the Americas and all of them are pretty big. In fact, condors are vultures and they\\u2019re extremely large birds. The New World vultures aren\\u2019t very closely related to each other but they all share some traits.\\n\\nVultures are scavengers that find dead animals to eat. The meat from dead animal carcasses is referred to as carrion. Vultures will also eat rotting fruit and garbage sometimes. Because they eat meat that is often spoiled, vultures have an extremely acidic digestive system that helps the bird digest its food quickly and kills off any bacteria that might make it sick. It also has beneficial bacteria in its digestive system that neutralize toxins.\\n\\nBut that\\u2019s not where the adaptations to eating carrion end. The vulture is a highly specialized bird. Most vultures don\\u2019t have many feathers on their heads, unlike other birds. If you\\u2019re snacking right now, you might want to pause this until you\\u2019re done. Quite often a vulture will actually stick its head into a rotting animal carcass to get at the, uh, softer parts. This means its head gets covered in rotting gunk and a lot of bacteria. If it had head feathers, they would be destroyed by bacteria.\\n\\nOne interesting thing about vultures of all kinds is that they actually help stop the spread of diseases like rabies and anthrax. Their digestive tract is so effective that it kills off viruses that caused the animal to die, so it\\u2019s actually beneficial to the environment in general and to farmers. Unfortunately, farmers don\\u2019t always know this and think vultures spread disease. Many vultures are protected species in most countries to stop farmers and other people from s...'