These vultures are likely engorged on deer-season spoils. At top is a Black Vulture, at bottom a Turkey Vulture.
Though vultures look like raptors, they are more closely related to the Ibis or chicken, and their feet are so weak that they can pick up nothing.
While they are terrific at soaring, they are not terrific muscle-powered fliers.
2 comments:
"Though vultures look like raptors, they are more closely related to the Ibis or chicken"
No they aren't. This is very outdated. Recent research shows they are indeed closely related to birds of prey.
Very outdated? Depends if you are age 20 or not. :)
"DNA sequence support for a close phylogenetic relationship between some storks and New World vultures" was published by the National Academy of Science in 1995.
There continues to be debate about where new world vultures (Cathartidae) fit in taxonomic tables.
If you've been around for more than 20 years, you've seen this debate go back and forth with both sides pointing down a microscope rather than at the birds themselves.
New world vultures do not have a voice box, unlike hawks, cool their legs by defecating on them (which hawks do not do), and have weak and webbed feet (like storks and unlike hawks and eagles).
New World vultures also do not build stick nests as hawks and eagles do.
While New World hawks and eagles have obvious analogs in the Old World, New Word vultures do not.
Nonetheless, a study in 2014 suggests that, based on molecular DNA analyses that depends on us knowing how things worked 69 million years ago, that New World Vultures might, in fact be related to hawks. See >> https://pgl.soe.ucsc.edu/jarvis14.pdf
But does one swallow a summer make, or one bit of theoretical DNA work? No and nope.
I am a little less impressed with the DNA field than some -- a skepticism that has stood the test of time as results and tests flip flop (as noted here). The South American Classification Committee (SACC) classifies New World Vultures as its own order, Cathartiformes, while the North American Classification Committee (NACC) counts them as Accipitriformes.
One thing is for sure: these birds have very little in common with hawks and eagles and a lot more in common with storks and ibis.
But is this debate "solved" and is that I have said "out of date"? Not by a long shot.
Post a Comment