How Do Turkey Vultures Find Food?

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective of this study is to determine which senses Turkey Vultures use to locate carrion. Turkey Vultures have exceptional eyesight and they also have an exceptional sense of smell. Do they rely on just eyesight or smell? Do they use both these senses in combination or is one sense dominant? Methods/Materials As a scent generator I used a hidden metal trash can with 20 pounds of meat in it and covered with a metal screen. I used motion and infrared activated trail cameras and visual observation to record data. Visual attractant was life size goose decoys mimicking dead geese. Results For 6 weeks I placed my visual and scent attractants individually in two different locations where Turkey Vultures were present. I recorded Vulture interest by both observation and remotely activated cameras. My study showed that Turkey Vultures could locate carrion by scent alone and did not show any interest in a visual attractant without accompanying scent. Conclusions/Discussion Because of California wildlife regulations I had to make sure Vultures could not feed on the meat I used to attract them. I believe that it would be possible to use these methods or variation of this method to determine if Turkey Vultures or California Condors were using an area which could be important in management of those species.

Competition history

• CSEF 2017 Zoology · Entry J2320

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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