Lappet-faced vulture

Physical features

• This vulture is mostly black with white thighs. A white bar can be seen running across the underwing’s leading edge when the bird is in flight.

• 1.15 meters (nearly 4 feet) long with a wingspan of 2.5 meters (8.5 feet). Average weight is around 6.7 kg (15 pounds)

• Bald, whitish-pink head with a vertical fold of skin on each side of the head/neck (lappets). These are more developed in older birds. In breeding condition the birds can get much redder heads and they can also flush red when excited.

Diet: Carnivore

• Wild – Carrion, young birds, eggs, lizards, fish, occasional insects

• Zoo – Bird of prey diet plus usual prey items (mice, rats, chicks quail, etc.)

Reproduction

• Will build a solitary nest, most often in an Acacia, laying one egg. Incubation is 50 days and chicks may stay in the nest for five months

• Mating doesn’t usually occur until at least 6 years of age.

• Breeding season is from late-April to mid-August in Africa. In North American zoos they lay in December/January.

Interpretive Information

• Like most vultures and buzzards, the lack of feathers on the head keeps the head clean and free of any parasites, also allowing the sun to ‘bake off’ any bacteria that remain.

• Has been known to raid lesser flamingo colonies, killing adults and eating young and eggs.

• Unlike some New World vultures, Old World vultures cannot smell carcasses – they simply watch the behaviors of other birds and locate the prey by sight.

• At a large carcass there is a hierarchy of vulture species, the lappets are the largest, dominant and they can open a carcass allowing other vulture species to feed. Lappets are especially good at digesting bones and skin.

• When carrion is scarce, this bird has been known to sit near locust or termite colonies and eat the insects as they emerge from their mound.

Updated July 2008