Skip to main content

Griffon Vulture

The Griffon Vulture is a large, Old World Vulture that can be found in mountainous areas of Europe, North Africa, and Asia. They have light, buff colored bodies, white neck ruffs, and bald heads that help them to stay disease free when digging around in corpses.

Gyps fulvus
As one would expect, Griffon Vultures are scavengers. They have excellent eyesight that helps them to locate dead and dying animals. Because the Vultures typically only swoop down when prey is spotted, other Vultures know what is going on when they spy one of their kind making a plunge. This behavior is how a newly dead corpse can be covered with Griffon Vultures in only a short matter of time. Griffon Vultures are also built for soaring, and can fly around for several hours and up to 100 miles looking for a meal.

Griffon Vultures are not actually territorial, though they do live in roughly the same area their entire lives. It is believed that pairs mate for life, and they lay only one egg at a time. Griffon Vultures are quite long lived, with ages frequently reaching over 40 years.

Griffon Vultures are listed as being of Least Concern, though populations in many localized areas are on the decline. This is due in part to changes in farming methods that have affected the Vultures' food supply; dead domesticated animal carcasses are seldom left laying around anymore.

IUCN Status :  Least Concern
Location : Europe, North Africa, and Asia
Size : Body Length 40in (102cm), Wingspan 100in (2.5m), Weight up to 30lbs (13.6kg)
Classification : Phylum : Chordata -- Class : Aves -- Order : Falconiformes
Family : Accipitridae -- Genus : Gyps -- Species : G. fulvus

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Bornean Orangutan

The Bornean Orangutan is one of two extant Orangutan species in the world. It is the third largest primate (after Gorillas) and is the largest primarily tree-dwelling animal in the world. Males are substantially larger than females, and average at around 165lbs. Bornean Orangutans are largely solitary. A handful might live within a small range but they will seldom interact with one another. Males and females only meet up to breed, which happens only once every several years. A young Orangutan will stay with it's mother for about five years, and the females tend to go about eight years between births. That is the longest interim period of any animal! Sadly, the Bornean Orangutans are in a lot of trouble. They need large forests in order to thrive, and deforestation and habitat degradation has left many homeless. They are also hunted for meat and for traditional medicines. Conservation areas are being established to help these guys in the wild, and it is believed that there are a...

Four!

For anyone who was counting, yesterday was our birthday-- four years! Four years filled with animals from A to Z, more than 1,100 of them! I can't thank my readers enough, it's been wonderful! And in celebration of that milestone... I'm taking a break. Hopefully not forever, but for a little bit at least. In the mean time I plan on getting a new layout out, along with some updates to some of the older articles. I'll post updates here and on the Facebook page, I'm also brainstorming some new animal-related projects, so keep an eye out! Thanks again for four awesome years!

Banggai Cardinalfish

Pterapogon kauderni The Banggai Cardinalfish is a small tropical fish that is becoming very rare in the wild, even though it has been successfully bred in captivity. You will only find these small, 3in long fish around the Banggai Islands of Indonesia. They are the only members of their genus, and you can tell them apart from other Cardinalfish by their three-striped bodies, tasseled first dorsal fin, long second dorsal, and their deep-forked tail fins. Banggai Cardinalfish are diurnal and live in small groups of about a dozen members. They are opportunistic feeders who dine on whatever smaller plants and animals they can find. Courtship and mating is pretty interesting for these guys-- females are the ones who initiate. They isolate a male and the pair will perform various courtship rituals before spawning. The Cardinalfish are mouthbrooders, which means that the males take the fertilized eggs (up to 90 of them) into their mouths and incubate them for up to 30 days. During t...