The Vultures Are Circling Trivia Quiz

Answer: Animals that have already died, spotted from mid-air

Vultures provide a vital role in the environment by efficiently cleaning up the carcasses of dead creatures. They will often be seen waiting (more or less) patiently for larger carnivores to finish their meal before going in to pick over the remains. Although carrion is the major food source for vultures, some will kill their own prey - mainly sick or incapacitated creatures - or consume other 'food' such as rotting fruit or human rubbish.

Vultures circling around in the sky are generally on the look-out for their next meal. Once they spot a dead or dying animal on the ground, they will swoop down to stake their claim to a share of the food. Vultures are very large and heavy birds and therefore they tend to hang out on warm thermal currents in the air, which minimise the effort spent flying while maximising their chances of spotting a feeding opportunity.

Answer: No

The different species of vultures found (almost) worldwide can be split into two main groups - Old World vultures that are found in Europe, Asia and Africa and New World vultures that inhabit the Americas. There are no species of vulture that include either Australia or Antarctica as part of their native habitat.

The Australian outback has its own group of carnivorous, scavenging creatures to fill the role eschewed by vultures. Dingoes (an Australian species of wild dog) are common across the area and eat carrion in addition to preying on small animals and birds; various omnivorous species of crow and raven will also eat dead animals (and scavenge from bins in areas of human habitation); and meat ants are carnivorous insects which forage the area for carrion that can be transported back to their nests.

Answer: A bald or lightly feathered head

Most (but definitely not all) vultures can be identified by the distinct lack of feathers on their heads. The lappet-faced vulture of Africa, for example, is noted for its completely bald head, whereas the griffon vulture of Europe and Asia has downy white head feathers. In total there are over 20 different identified species of vulture worldwide.

The traditional explanation for vultures' baldness is that it saves the birds from getting messy feathers while chomping their way through particularly unpleasant carcasses. However, it is now believed that vultures use their bare heads as a form of thermoregulation. Academic studies have shown that vultures tuck their heads into their feathers when it is cold and stretch their neck and head out during hot weather.

Although some birds of prey (such as the red kite) have a forked tail, vultures do not. A brightly coloured crest would be much better suited to a parrot and a delicate long thin beak is more likely to be found on something like a hummingbird than a predator that needs to rip open carcasses to get at its dinner.

Answer: True

If you happened to know that the Latin name for the Andean condor is Vultur gryphus, then you'd have had a head-start in getting the correct answer to this question. In fact, it is a New World vulture found along the western coast of South America and in the neighbouring Andes mountain chain. The bird is treated as a national symbol of many of the countries of that area, including Chile, Bolivia and Peru.

The Andean condor can be easily identified as it is a large bird with predominantly black plumage and a feathery white 'ruff' around its neck. The male also has a distinctive large red comb or caruncle on the top of its beak and, unlike most other birds of prey, is larger than the female.

In the wild, it has been estimated that Andean condors can live for up to around 50 years. In captivity they have even greater life expectancy - a bird named Thaao, from Beardsley Zoo in Connecticut, was nearly 80 years old when he died in 2010.

Answer: Urohidrosis

You would assume that vultures would have been able to come up with a better way of keeping cool than covering their legs with their own droppings, but apparently they haven't managed it! The birds' droppings are usually white in appearance (a good colour for reflecting heat) and also contain a proportion of uric acid. Once on the legs, the fluid evaporates and provides a cooling effect for the bird.

New World vultures aren't the only birds to use this technique, as many species of stork also apply it. However, Old World vultures don't appear to need to resort to it. The term is also applied to seals, as they often urinate on their hind flippers while basking on the shore.

Urosepsis is a severe illness in humans caused by a urinary infection spreading to the bloodstream; hyperuricosuria is a term meaning excessive uric acid in urine; and cystolitholapaxy is a treatment for the removal of bladder stones.

Answer: Bearded vulture

The bearded vulture, or lammergeier, is usually found in mountainous regions of Europe, Asia and Africa. Adult birds have generally white feathers on the upper parts of their head that contrast with the darker feathers around their eyes and chin. It was this distinctive plumage that gained them the name 'bearded' vulture and also inspired their Latin name, 'barbatus'. Bearded vultures also differ from other vultures in behaviour as well as appearance - they tend to eat bone marrow rather the meat or flesh from carrion, and they frequently attack live prey (including poor tortoises that they drop from height to crack the shells open).

The name 'lammergeier' means lamb-vulture or lamb-hawk in German and derives from an old (but mistaken) belief that the birds regularly attacked lambs.

The incorrect options are all species of Old World vulture. The cinereous vulture is often found in mountainous areas of Europe and Asia and the hooded vulture is a resident of Africa. Rüppell's vulture is one of the highest-flying birds in the world - having once been recorded at 37,000 feet (following an unfortunate encounter with the engine of a jet aircraft).

Answer: Diclofenac

Several vulture species native to the Indian sub-continent suffered major population losses between the early 1990s and the late 2000s. Surveys carried out in India in 2007 suggested that over 95% of the country's Indian vultures and slender-billed vultures had been lost, along with over 99% of white-rumped vultures. This ecological disaster has been linked by various academic studies to the presence of diclofenac and other similar non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) in livestock. Vultures ingest the drug while preying on the carcasses of animals treated with a veterinary version of diclofenac, but unfortunately it is toxic to them and believed to cause renal failure. Veterinary diclofenac was removed from the market in India in 2006, a lead followed shortly afterwards by neighbouring Nepal and Pakistan.

The loss of the vulture population has also had a wider impact on the environment as the gap has been filled by increasing number of wild dogs - who are known to be carriers of many diseases, including rabies.

If you happen to have been prescribed diclofenac and find yourself surrounded by circling vultures you could always try waving your medication at them in the hope that they will flee in fear of their lives. Fluoxetine (an anti-depressant more commonly known as Prozac), methadone (an opiate drug often used as a heroin replacement) and warfarin (an anticoagulant) are not known for endangering vultures.

Answer: King vulture

The king vulture is found across large parts of Central and South America. Its plumage is predominantly grey with black wing and tail feathers. Oddly enough, its multi-coloured appearance doesn't come from a range of fancy feathers, but from different shades of skin tone on its head and neck. The skin can be yellow, red, purple, blue or orange in different patterns and combinations. It also has a distinctive yellow caruncle on its beak and a red ring around its eyes.

The Mayan codices are a set of books written by scholars of the Mayan civilisation and believed to date from the era prior to the 16th century Spanish conquest of the area. They use paper made from tree bark and are in written in Mayan hieroglyphic script. One glyph appears to represent the king vulture, which in Mayan mythology acted as a messenger between humans and the Gods.

There are no birds with the common name monarch vulture, sovereign vulture or pharaoh vulture; however, the Egyptian vulture is sometimes known as a pharaoh's chicken (a name which probably doesn't give a correct impression of the ferocious-looking bird in question).

Answer: Vomiting to reduce their weight

The four key principles of flight are drag, lift, thrust and weight. Vultures are known for vomiting to speedily reduce their weight, particularly when faced with a predator, in order to be able to take-off more efficiently. The practice also has the added benefit of distracting the creature causing the threat, since the chances are that they won't want to look at, or smell, a pile of freshly regurgitated (and often rancid) carrion. The exception to this would probably be bald eagles, which appear to quite like vulture vomit as a meal.

Vultures are able to vomit on demand in these circumstances as they store large quantities of food in their crop during the feeding process. This has the dual benefit of allowing the vulture to take as much food as possible from a carcass and to take food back to the nest for their chicks.

At this point I want to offer my sincere apologies to anyone who was attempting to eat dinner whilst answering this question.

Answer: Kettle

If you're unlucky enough to ever find vultures circling around above your head then at least you now have the knowledge that you are looking up (probably somewhat nervously) at a kettle of them. If you were to spot a committee of vultures, a volt of vultures or a venue of vultures you would likely be looking at a group of the said birds in a tree; a wake of vultures would represent them as they huddle around their dinner.

Quite why a kettle was ever chosen to represent a flying pack of vultures is unclear, but perhaps the circular pattern of their flight reminded someone of water being sloshed around in a kettle? This seems more likely at least than anyone believing that the movement of vultures in the air has the ability to boil water...