review
We know that the hyena living in Africa is a carnivorous animal that often follows lions and shares prey with them. Sometimes they even attack in groups to drive away the ferocious lions and monopolize other people's prey. Sometimes hyenas will attack wildebeest and antelope in groups, and they are always victorious. The appearance of hyenas is really annoying. The front legs are long and the hind legs are short. They run staggeringly. But hyenas have a pair of extremely sharp teeth and very strong and strong masseter muscles. They can bite hard bones and crunch them like a piece of candy.
What’s interesting is that in the sky, there are also birds that like hyenas that eat bones. It is the Bearded Vulture, the “hyena” among birds. The Bearded Vulture is perhaps the most widely distributed vulture bird of prey in the world. It is found in high mountain areas of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Let’s take a look at the “hyena among birds”.
Bearded vultures are also fond of eating bones, although they do not have the sharp teeth and strong masseter muscles of hyenas.
Beard vultures have their own unique tricks for eating bones. First, after they find a bone, they don't eat it immediately, but grab the bone. The bone, which is equal to their own weight, can be easily dragged up, raised to an altitude of 30-40 meters, and flew towards the rocky area. Then they look for the right opportunity and throw the bones from high altitude. The broken bones reveal the nutritious marrow. Then they swoop down to grab the broken bones. If they are slow, the crows will get there first and take advantage of the opportunity to rob them.
There may also be a situation where the bone is not broken, so it has to be broken a second or third time until the bone is broken. Some bones are too hard and cannot be broken after repeated repeated times. The bearded vulture has to give up and find another place.
Unlike the vulture and the Himalayan vulture, the bearded vulture likes to live in high mountain bare rock areas. If you go to their habitat, you can see bones thrown by bearded vultures all over the exposed rocks.
The "sour stomach" of the bearded vulture digests bones almost 24 hours a day, while the stomachs of other raptors only need 3 to 6 hours a day to work.
Zoologists from the University of Glasgow in the UK have confirmed that 90% of the bearded vulture's food is bones. Zoologists also found dents and cuts made by gastric juice on the bones it swallowed, which shows that the bearded vulture can not only digest bones, but also bite them.
I still don’t know how it left obvious cut marks on the bones without teeth? Its esophagus is special and elastic, and it can swallow bones 25 centimeters long and 4 centimeters thick without teeth. There are a large number of cells in its stomach that can release hydrochloric acid, and the acidity of the gastric juice is actually stronger than the electrolyte in a car battery!
There is fatty marrow inside the bones that bearded vultures love to eat. Eating bones is more nutritious than eating the same amount of meat. The bearded vulture relies on its "acid stomach" to dissolve the mineral skeleton in the bone before it can fully enjoy this highly nutritious protein. Therefore, the bearded vulture's "acid stomach" digests bones almost 24 hours a day, while the stomachs of other raptors only work for 3 to 6 hours a day.
It is precisely because of such a good appetite that the bearded vulture has sufficient physical strength and can fly continuously for 9 to 10 hours a day in search of food. Even if it encounters strong winds of level 5 to 6, the bearded vulture can still fly freely in the sky. Only cloudy or rainy weather will hinder its activities.
The technique of breaking bones requires the bearded vulture to practice for seven years before mastering this technique
For the heavy turtle with a hard shell, the bearded vulture will also catch it high in the air and throw it to the ground to peck at its meat. Speaking of turtles, legend has it that a playwright from Eskilos was hit by a turtle falling from the sky and died on the spot. The playwright who suffered unexplained misfortunes was still blamed after his death: people said that he had offended the gods and that was why he was punished like this. Many years later, ornithologists vindicated the playwright - concluding that the perpetrator must be a bearded vulture, because there were bearded vultures where the playwright died.
Tibetan Plateau, the safe and vast home of the Bearded Vulture
The Bearded Vulture was once a relatively common bird in the European alpine areas, and is quite common in the Alps and Palences areas. Bearded vultures mainly forage for carcasses and small rodents, and only prey on sick and weak individuals of small ungulates when food is insufficient. However, local people have a huge misunderstanding about it. People call it "lamb predator" and think that they often prey on sheep and even babies grazed by humans.
As a result, the bearded vultures became the hated enemies of herdsmen. Humans tried every means to eliminate them and poisoned the dead livestock by stuffing poison into their stomachs. After years of hunting, the Bearded Vulture has become extinct across Europe. It disappeared in the Alpine region of Western Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1913, the last bearded vulture in Italy died in the Aoste Valley, while in Switzerland the bearded vulture had been exterminated in 1886.
In my country, Bearded Vultures are widely distributed, especially in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the roof of the world. They can be seen almost all year round in Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu, and Tibet, and occasionally in Hubei, Sichuan, Liaoning, and Hebei.
Bearded vultures often move in groups with other raptors of the genus Vulture during the non-breeding season, but they are much more alert. When they find a corpse, they will always observe it 50 meters away for a long time. Only when they are sure that there is no danger will they slowly and suspiciously approach the corpse.
Summary
Bearded vultures are large birds of prey. As top creatures, they play a vital role in controlling the biological chain and maintaining ecological balance. We should protect them. Its claws have degenerated and lost the ability to hunt, so they mainly live on carrion, which objectively prevents the spread of grassland infectious diseases. Moreover, Chinese scientists have detected plague F1 antibodies from the serum of bearded vultures, which further proves that bearded vultures are veritable "scavengers of the grassland."
