Quarantine entry #102 - July 1

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but happy Canada day everyone, all the same. May those who are better off in life than I am; enjoy it all the same, wherever they may be! What next?

Let us get back to the vultures, but the Old World vultures this time. Since there is quite a few of them, let us use the already-mentioned cinereous vulture as a basic prototype.

Pause. What is cinereous, one may wonder? Apparently, it is a pale ashy color, more grey than black. There is a reason as to why the cinereous vulture is also known as the Eurasian black vulture – it is more black in color than pale grey, so maybe we should use its’ other-other name, the monk vulture, instead.

Why are we using the cinereous vulture as our Old World vulture basic bird? Because of ‘Planet Earth’, which we have also discussed before. In its’ ‘Temperate Woodlands’ episode, sir David had showed footage of a mother and cub Amur leopards frightening those birds away from a kill during a Siberian winter. Both leopards and vultures are usually associated with tropics, not a Siberian winter, so ‘Planet Earth’ showed that both leopards and vultures are made of harder stock than how we assume them to be. That said, the cinereous vulture’s closest relative is the lappet-faced vulture of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and neither of those places is known for winter snows, so there is that. What next?

Climatic outliers aside, the Old World Vultures do come across as slightly, bigger, tougher, and more varied birds than the New World counterparts are. They include such atypical creatures as the lammergeyer, which prefers to eat bone, the palm nut vulture, which eats palm nuts, and the Egyptian vulture, which uses rocks to smash open ostrich eggs and eat their contents. By contrast, the New World vultures don’t have such deviants, they all are scavengers and carnivores… as are the bulk of the Old World vultures as well; both the cinereous vulture and the lappet-faced vulture are known not just to scavenge, but to kill live prey as well, sometimes fairly big one, such as the wild lambs. Pause.

Let us get back to the taxonomy – whereas the New World vultures’ closest relatives are not fully determined yet, (but they may be storks), the Old World vultures are related to the hawks and eagles that we have discussed earlier… another pause.

Let us get back to the eagles – to the white-tailed eagle, for example. As we have talked about them, whereas falcons invested in speed, and hawks – in endurance and maneuverability, the eagles invested in strength, which cost them speed: their default method of movement is passively gliding via warm currents of air, conserving their strength for when they need to attack. The vultures utilize the same strategy, save that they do not usually attack live prey, but scavenge from kills of other carnivores, which are usually mammals.

Again, this is a mixed bag – for example, there is footage of vulture flocks actually scaring cheetahs away from their kills rather than patiently waiting for them to eat. Everyone dominates the poor cheetahs, it looks like! ….Normally, however, carnivorous mammals such as big cats, wild dogs, and – more rarely – bears will eat their fill, and only then will the various birds, including the vultures of both types, join in. The birds may be a more numerous and varied group of vertebrates at this point in Earth’s history, but the mammals appear to be the more dominant one for now. Pound for pound, mammals are more powerful and massive than the birds are, and so birds have evolved to take advantage of the more successful mammals, which includes the ancestors of the vultures, who had split from their eagle and hawk cousins sometime in the past to become almost exclusive scavengers; some of them – namely, the now extinct teratorns – were some of the biggest birds that’d ever flown… but that is another story.

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #99 - June 28

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but we will continue to talk about it anyways. Today’s topic are the falcons, including the great peregrine, and its’ cousin, the prairie falcon, but right now we will approach the falcons from the other end of the spectrum – the crested caracara.

What is a caracara? It is a genus of birds in the falcon family and order; right now, there are two species of these birds – the northern and southern caracaras; both are crested, which is why the term ‘crested caracara’ is somewhat outdated and is not used too much anymore, especially by the scientists. Both of the bird species have crests; the southern caracara lives only in South America, while its’ northern counterpart is found from the northern South America to Central America, to parts of southern U.S. There was a third species of those birds, the so-called Guadalupe caracara, but it died out around 1900, so let us not talk about it for now.

Behavioristically… the caracaras are like the anti-falcons: they fly only when they have a clear designated goal before them, and otherwise, they prefer to spend their time on food. They are carnivores, of course, but whereas the falcons usually prefer to feed on other birds, (the hawks have a more mixed diet), the caracara has a much wider diet, and the northern species even eats fruits on occasion; the southern caracara – not so much. More usually, though, the northern caracara is a scavenger rather than a hunter, (and much ado had been made about the peregrine not eating carrion, as a rule), which makes it rather vulture-like in behavior.

This brings us back to the king vulture. Why? Because a certain William Bartram, an American naturalist, (1739-1832) has written and depicted about a bird of prey that – on the illustration – resembles a king vulture, save for a differently colored tail, but in text is more like the northern caracara instead, and here lies the conundrum. If we accept the possibility that the bird is a king vulture, then we have to accept that Mr. Bartram hadn’t talked about the northern caracara at all, and that doesn’t add up, because as far as scavengers go, the king vulture is a tropical bird, one that doesn’t come up to the U.S. at all, (unlike the American black and the turkey vultures, let alone the California condor), whereas the northern caracara does. And-?

And nothing; the paragraph above was aimed to show how convoluted and tangled the avian I.D. can be, even in the modern times, what with the modern technology and all, and back then, when everything depended primarily on the human eye – even moreso. In addition, that before we return to the fact that the caracaras are some of the least falcon-like falcons that have existed, (since the late Pleistocene epoch). Anything else?

Yes. Aside from caracara the genus, there is also caracara the family, which contains five genera of birds of prey that belong to the falcon group, and all of which are called caracaras; the term ‘crested caracara’ applies to only 2 living and several extinct species of the caracara genus, but as far as species go, many of South American birds of prey that aren’t eagles or vultures are called caracaras – about 10 species in total, and while they look somewhat similar to each other, they have plenty of differences too. That said, the separation of the black caracara and the red-throated one into two separate genera happened fairly recently, so there is that.

This brings us briefly back to the vultures. Do you remember when we have discussed the American black vulture, and briefly mentioned the cinereous vulture and the red-headed one, because they were also both called black vultures in the past? Well, the red-headed vulture was also called the king vulture in the past, but now this term is applied only to the American species instead, because of reasons…

Ah well, for now this is it. See you all soon instead!

Quarantine entry #98 - June 27

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, however, let us talk about something else again. No, not about ‘Force of Nature’, a new Mel Gibson movie – that we will talk about separately; let us talk about… what?

I admit that I wanted to talk about the king vulture for today – we have discussed the New World vultures in general and the American black vulture in particular in the past, when something else came up: the Thylacosmilus.

In case you forgot, the Thylacosmilus was a prehistoric sabre-toothed mammal, and it was a marsupial, meaning that it was more closely related to the modern koalas and kangaroos than to the big cats, dogs, bears and so on. I also must admit that my perception of the Thylacosmilus is influenced by Mauricio Anton’s ‘Sabretooth’ book, but what else is there? Donald R. Prothero’s ‘Princeton Guide’? Yes, no, I will pass.

Back to the Thylacosmilus for real. People like Mauricio Anton and his sources had depicted the marsupial sabretooth, (aka Thylacosmilus and its’ closest extinct kin), as, well, a marsupial sabretooth, a marsupial counterpart to the placental sabre-toothed carnivores, (and there were quite a lot); right now, it is the word ‘carnivores’ that is key. The recent studies have implied that the Thylacosmilus had a different lifestyle from other sabre-toothed mammals, such as Smilodon, and used its’ sabre-shaped teeth in a different way; already there are theories that it might have been an insectivore instead – but how possible is that?

Let us look at the modern mammals. Recently, we have talked about bears in general, including the sloth bear. While the giant panda is an obligate herbivore, and the polar bear is an obligate carnivore, the sloth bear may be the most specialized bear of them all, as it feeds almost completely on ants, termites, and the like. As a result, on one hand, it got powerful front legs and mighty claws, and on the other, it got a specialized muzzle and reduced teeth, but it can bite, and its’ canine teeth are especially well developed. Pause.

Now, let us look at the Thylacosmilus. Its’ paws and claws were more bear- than cat-like, with claws that were only semi-retractable and not as sharp as those of true cats, and its’ forepaws were powerful, but then again, this is a trait shared by all the sabre-toothed carnivores, including, the mammal-like reptiles, maybe. Its’ muzzle, however, is blunt, not long as that of the sloth bear. So-?

So nothing, let us look at the aardwolf as well. Despite its’ name, it is no relative of the aardvark, but of the hyenas, and in fact it looks like a small striped hyena on the outside. On the inside, however, it is no scavenger or grave robber, but rather feeds on social insects, termites and ants. Not unlike the sloth bear, it too has reduced teeth, but notable canine teeth for self-defence… and nothing else that would imply that it was an insectivore, rather than a carnivore, as the rest of the hyena family is. Thylacosmilus could have been like this as well. Anything else?

Sadly, no, but the carnivorous marsupials are a confusing group, as paleontologists are still unable to properly agree as to what and how they looked like, let alone their paleoecology. What else?

Let us get back to the king vulture, maybe? Well, these birds have appeared on the planet during the mid-Pliocene, when the last marsupial sabretooths were still living there, so the two might have met back then. However, the fossil remains of the king vulture from that period are scarce, so it is hard to say. What is known, however, that this bird is most closely related to the Andean condor out of the entire New World vulture family, and after the two species of condor, it is the biggest of the New World vultures; certainly the most colorful. An imposing bird, the adult king vulture has predominantly white plumage, which has a slight rose-yellow tinge to it. In stark contrast, the wing coverts, flight feathers and tail are dark grey to black, as is the prominent thick neck ruff. The head and neck are devoid of feathers, the skin shades of red and purple on the head, vivid orange on the neck and yellow on the throat. On the head, the skin is wrinkled and folded, and there is a highly noticeable irregular golden crest attached on the cere above its orange and black bill; this caruncle does not fully form until the bird's fourth year. A true king of the vultures, in fact. Anything else?

…For the moment, the king vulture is classified as ‘Least Concern’, as opposed to the Andean condor, which is ‘Near Threatened’ and the California condor, which is ‘Critically Endangered’; hopefully, this trend will continue, and the king vulture will remain flourishing for ages to come, and not vanish from the face of the planet as the various sabre-toothed mammalian carnivores did.

…This is it for now; see you all soon!