In the Qilian Mountains of Gansu in northwest China, Lop Nur in Xinjiang, Sanjiangyuan in Qinghai, and Qiangtang in Tibet, the most common thing to see when looking up are vultures soaring in the sky. Most commonly seen in the mountains and grasslands, they gather in black masses and dance around, fighting for carrion minced meat to eat. is the vulture . The most frightening thing is that can pick up the one-year-old child of herdsmen and fly away, it is still vulture!
Currently, there are more than 9,000 known species of birds in the world, and there are more than 1,300 species in China alone. However, did you know that only the vulture is the bird with the largest wings, the largest volume, the heaviest weight, the highest flight, the ugliest appearance, the ugliest cry, and the smelliest food in China?
Vultures also have many local names, such as mountain eagle, dog-headed eagle, dog-headed vulture, etc. Because it likes to live in high mountains and plateau areas, it is also known as the "alpine vulture".
★The heaviest bird
The heaviest bird in China is the ostrich. But ostriches are native to Africa and are the largest birds in the world. Adults can be up to 2.5 meters tall and male ostriches can weigh up to 150 kilograms. But ostriches cannot fly and can only run. Although they settled in China very early, they are not considered Chinese birds.
Currently, the largest flying bird in China is the vulture. Vultures often soar at an altitude of more than 6,000 meters . Data records that vultures can weigh up to 20 kilograms, but some data say that vultures can weigh up to 25 kilograms! The weight is larger than giant swan . The maximum weight of a whooper swan is 12 kilograms.
In addition, can you find a bird in China that is heavier than a vulture? It's hard.
★The vulture is the largest bird with the widest and longest wingspan
According to measurements, the largest vulture is 120 centimeters long, and its wingspan is generally between 2.5 meters and 2.9 meters. The longest wingspan can exceed 3 meters. . Wing width can reach more than 60 cm. No wonder the old sheepherder in the northwest said: These vultures are passing by at low altitude, like a black cloud passing overhead. This is not an exaggeration, it shows how large the wingspan of a vulture is!
Everyone would think that a guy with such big wings would be able to fly ninety thousand miles and soar all over the world. However, don't be fooled by its powerful wings. Because the vulture is the one with the weakest flying ability among the raptors .
In order to save physical strength, vultures have developed an energy-saving way of flying - gliding, just like the kind of gliding we see in human sports using gliders .
" A Dream of Red Mansions " Xue Baochai recited " Good wind, with its power, sends me to the blue clouds " is the best portrayal of the vulture's ability. Vultures have developed a unique skill of ascending, descending and flying long distances with the help of natural forces. Their huge wings are their capital, and taking advantage of changes in air currents to rise and fall is their special skill.
The vulture's body has a special function , which allows it to feel rising thermal air currents that are invisible to the naked eye. Relying on rising thermal air currents, they can easily continue to rise like a fighter jet , until they can reach a height of 488.86 meters above Mount Everest!
When a vulture flies, it stretches its wings in a straight line and rarely flaps its wings. It uses its wing and tail feathers to adjust its height and direction. Of course, in order to fly high and low, it will actively look for geographical environments that produce special airflows. Don't you think it's amazing?
★Vultures are the birds that can fly the highest and farthest.
As we all know, the greater the weight of , the greater the attraction of the earth to it. The lower the flying height, the closer the flying distance.. When we were children, we often played by throwing stones in the wild. The smaller the stones, the higher or farther they would be thrown. The heavier the stone, not only will it be more difficult to throw, but it will also not be thrown high or far. This is all caused by the earth's gravity.
Fortunately, there was a Newton in the world. He discovered the "Law of Universal Gravity" , which made us know in junior high school: Any two particles have a mutual attraction force in the direction of their connecting centroids. .The magnitude of this gravitational force is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of their distance... Therefore, the greater the weight, the greater the attraction exerted by the earth on it.
In the northwest, many herdsmen often stare at the vultures circling in the sky when they have nothing to do, watching them leisurely fly over the peaks of the Himalayas, Tanggula Mountains, Kunlun Mountains, Qilian Mountains and other peaks. They often wonder: How can these ugly guys fly so high without flapping their wings?
★Scientists can't explain why vultures fly high
The vulture is the largest bird. Why can it fly over Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world?
Scientific research shows that vultures fly for an average of 3 hours a day, but they flap their wings for no more than 2 minutes during the entire flight, accounting for only 1% of the flight time! This is flying without flapping wings. Can you walk without moving your feet?
According to some information, a vulture can fly in the air for more than 5 hours without flapping its wings, covering a distance of 172 kilometers. Do you think vultures have created the miracle of flight?
According to the law of gravity, only those birds with the smallest size and weight, such as hummingbirds , can fly farther and higher. Unfortunately it's just the opposite! why is that?
Thanks to scientists from Lund University in Sweden, they studied the relationship between body weight and physical efficiency of migratory birds. They first captured some migratory birds that could fly from the UK to the Russian Arctic in one go, flying a distance of 5,400 kilometers for experiments.
The research results are surprising: The greater the weight of migratory birds, the more efficient their flight is, which is completely contrary to aerodynamic theory.
It can be seen that there is a scientific basis for vultures to fly the highest. It’s a pity that scientists can’t give a scientific explanation yet!
★The vulture is the most ferocious and ugliest bird, and also the most beautiful bird.
As the name suggests, a vulture is a naked and hairless vulture. Actually wrong. How can a featherless bird fly? The vulture is hairless only on its head and neck, but its body is plump with feathers.
The vulture is the largest bird of prey. It has steel claws and a hooked beak and sharp eyes. However, because its head and neck are bare, the exposed skin looks very ugly and ferocious. Therefore, some people call vultures the ugliest birds in the world.
Why? Because people always like birds with plump and beautiful feathers. The most admired big bird by Chinese people is the phoenix. Although no one has ever seen what a phoenix looks like, people are using their own aesthetics and imagination to enrich the beauty of the phoenix's feathers. As for the big birds in reality, peacocks and colorful pheasants were placed first. Because they are colorful.
The vulture is very aggrieved . It may think: I don’t want to be so ugly, but the lack of hair on my neck and head is not caused by being picked off by my opponent in a fight, but because it is born without hair. Why? You don’t even understand the principle of “use it or lose it” in biology?
Vultures are born to like to stick their heads into the abdominal cavity and chest cavity of animals to take out the internal organs and eat . The feathers on the neck and head are in the way, and will be stained with a lot of blood and dirt. It is very troublesome to clean, and it will be even more unsightly if not cleaned. Therefore, it simply stops growing on its own.
This picture is selected from the Internet. The vulture of the famous Chinese painting master Pan Tianshou.
In fact, the vulture’s bald head does not hide its flaws. Its overall majesty is a beauty of its own style. Chinese traditional painting masters Xu Beihong, Pan Tianshou, Li Kuchan, etc. all like to draw vultures, and they all like to use the majesty and majesty of vultures to express their natural beauty.
★ The bird that likes to eat smelly meat the most
The vulture is heavy, has a long wingspan, can fly high and far, and has great ambitions to rise thousands of miles, but its hobbies are not! Its living habits are really unflattering. It likes to eat scary dead bodies and stinky carrion.
The vulture is the big bird with the worst hunting ability among the raptors eagle eagle kite. However, according to the principle of Li Bai "What I am born with must be useful", vultures can take a different approach: if they are poor in hunting ability, they will look for ready-made food to eat. So, it focused on the dead body.
In China, there are winding mountains, vast Gobi desert, vast forests, and boundless grasslands. Thousands of land animals lived during the period. Birth, aging, sickness and death are the laws of nature. Therefore, many animals die every day and are then exposed in the wilderness.
Vultures have a unique advantage. It is the "Air Force", soaring thousands of miles into the blue sky every day. It has sharp eyesight and its eyesight is 8 times that of humans! From a high altitude, it can clearly see snakes snaking in the grass, rats lurking, and lizards crawling. But it doesn't care about these little things, which are really not enough to fill the gap between the teeth. It focuses on the carcasses of large animals.
Once it finds an animal "lying flat" on land, it will scream with joy, then lower its height and circle around to observe. At first it couldn't resist the temptation of hunger and dead bodies. As soon as it saw the "lying" animals, it swooped down to peck at them. As a result, it was suddenly killed by sleeping ligers, wolves, leopards and other beasts. Some ferocious beasts want to eat carved meat, so they pretend to be dead to trap it!
became smarter after suffering more losses. From then on, the vultures passed the message to each other: Don't land rashly if you see the guy "lying flat", only the sky is safe.
So once they find a "lying" guy, they will hover from high to low, patiently observing it from multiple angles, sometimes for two or three days. It is not afraid of the smell of corpses. feels that the more rotten it is, the more fragrant it tastes.
Even if it lands, the vulture will calmly observe beside it: see if the eyes of the dead body blink, and see if the belly is breathing up and down. Even if these are certain, it is not rash, but quietly approaches, opens its hooked mouth, pecks hard, and jumps away like lightning. It wasn't until he was sure that it was indeed a dead body that he came closer to feast on it.
★The vulture’s cry is the most unpleasant
People like birds because their sounds are sweet. People do not hesitate to use beautiful words to describe the calls of birds: "whispering", "chirping", "melodious" and "tactful". For example, thrush , oriole , skylark , blue-spotted chin, red-spotted chin, etc. have become pets that people like to keep in cages. Of course, I also like the fluent starling and the parrot that imitates the tongue.
But the vulture's song is so unpleasant, it is simply a terrifying noise, worse than the howling of ghosts and wolves! People say that the cries of a vulture are a perfect match for its ugly appearance!
Herdsmen in the northwest said that they would tremble all over and get goosebumps when they hear the cries of vultures! It is impossible to determine whether it is "Wow", "Yeah", "Ah" or "Ga". But it's sharp, dry, and hoarse, which makes people afraid to listen and can't bear to listen. This is the real feeling.
Friends, are you familiar with vultures? Do you also know what characteristics the vulture has? ( Author profile: Wang Tianxiang, a senior journalist and writer, has published 42 novels and other various monographs, written more than 200 episodes of TV series, and created dozens of TV films on history, culture, scenery, documentary and other topics, and has appeared in various newspapers and periodicals Published hundreds of articles and more than a thousand online articles)
