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Isn’t it a myth that vultures circle kills
by jncfhnb 3y ago
Isn’t it a myth that vultures circle kills
- standeven 3y agoI’ve personally seen turkey vultures circle carcasses on several occasions.
- soulofmischief 3y agoI've witnessed it many times myself.
- DontchaKnowit 3y agoNo. They'll even circle live animals if they can tell they are sick or dying. I personally witnessed this in the city trash dump of Tegucigalpa. Emaciated cattle grazing in trash, with cultures circling above them.
- fakedang 3y agoAlso vultures circling the battlefields of every Attila, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, before swords were joined.;)
- el_benhameen 3y agoDifferent area and I assume different vultures, but head on out to the east east bay in the summer and you’ll see plenty of vulture circles.
- optimalsolver 3y agoThey absolutely do on the East African savannah.
- swatcoder 3y agoThey circle and kettle in other circumstances as well, but no, they definitely do circle iver carcasses (and what may soon become so). It's a familiar site if you live around them. Do you remember where you heard it's a myth? I'd be curious to see how that argument was made.
- jncfhnb 3y agoThe circling behavior is, as I read, almost always them waiting for a warm current to take them elsewhere.
- thebeardisred 3y agoWhere did you read this? I would love to learn more.
- jncfhnb 3y agohttps://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/10/25/why-do-buzzards-circle-endlessly-above-carrion/?sh=2b92416974d4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/10/25/why-do-buzzard... https://www.quora.com/Why-do-buzzards-circle-around-their-prey-in-the-sky https://www.quora.com/Why-do-buzzards-circle-around-their-pr... https://www.livescience.com/32202-how-do-vultures-find-dead-stuff.html https://www.livescience.com/32202-how-do-vultures-find-dead-... https://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2020/07/turkey-vultures-close-loop-in-circle-of-life.html#:~:text=Contrary%20to%20popular%20belief%2C%20circling,detected%2C%20then%20repeating%20the%20process https://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2020/07/turkey-vultures-c....
- swatcoder 3y agoThanks for sharing these! And yeah, on close read, you'll see that they're all trying to communicate that you can't assume that the vultures are circling a carcass whenever you see them circling because they have other behaviors that involve circling as well. But it's an easy detail to miss in some of them for sure!
- jncfhnb 3y agoI feel that’s not quite right. The writing appears to indicate that circling a carcass is the small minority. They’re finding the carcasses by smell of decay. I’ve read elsewhere vultures are actually good signals of gas leaks for this reason. They don’t have much of a reason to circle a carcass they intend to eat unless perhaps it’s a lagging indicator and they’re leaving the carcass. They don’t circle dying things because they don’t have the means to detect dying things. I’m not convinced circling vultures is a good sign that there’s a carcass below them.
- KineticLensman 3y agoMyth or not, the poachers believe it and murder the vultures as a result. I’ve worked with vultures at a raptor conservancy. They are social, curious and intelligent birds. I have very fond memories of an Egyptian vulture named Boe who would unfailingly undoe my shoelaces when I entered her aviary. I love these birds
- spookie 3y agoAs someone who lived near Egyptian Vultures and Eurasian Black Vultures (Aegypius monachus), I can assure you they do. But that's not the only reason for them to do so.