Profile
In flight
Vultures & Condors
Bearded Vulture
Gypaetus barbatus
- mythic
- 120 km/h
- Near Threatened
Drops bones from height to crack them, then eats the marrow. The only bird whose diet is 85% bone — and your message.
- Population
- Roughly 1,675–6,700 mature individuals globally, decreasing (BirdLife/IUCN 2021 assessment)
- Habitat
- Remote, precipitous mountainous terrain — cliffs and rocky ledges typically above 1,000-2,000 m elevation (up to ~4,500–5,000 m in Africa/Central Asia), near ungulate herds and large predators
- Fun fact
- The Bearded Vulture is the only known vertebrate whose diet is composed mostly of bone, and it will drop large bones from heights of 50-150 m onto rocky "ossuaries" to smash them into swallowable fragments.
- Range
- Widely but patchily distributed across the Palearctic, Afrotropical, and Indomalayan regions (~61.7 million km² of range): Pyrenees, Alps, Caucasus, Arabian Peninsula, Iranian mountains, Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Himalayas, into China, plus isolated populations in East (Ethiopian Highlands), North, and southern Africa
- Diet
- Scavenger specializing in bones and bone marrow (roughly 70-90% of diet per most sources, sometimes cited as 85-90%), mostly from mammal carcasses; drops large bones from height (50-150 m) onto rocks ("ossuaries") to crack them open and swallow the fragments/marrow
- Size
- 1.1 m
- Wingspan
- 2.5 m
- Lifespan
- 21 years
