20: Jaguar & Bearded Vulture
Christian: Hi everyone, this is Christian Weatherford!
Ellen: And this is Ellen Weatherford.
Christian: And you're listening to Just the Zoo of Us, a podcast where we take your favorite animals and give them ratings from 1 to 10. Or, I guess it could be zero to 10.
Ellen: We did give a zero, didn't we?
Christian: I don't remember.
Ellen: I think you gave the botfly a zero for aesthetics. I think
Christian: That makes sense. So yeah. Thanks for coming to our podcast. We give those ratings in three categories: effectiveness, ingenuity, and aesthetics. We are not zoological experts.
Ellen: Nope, not yet. They haven't given us our honorary zoology credentials yet. We're working on them.
Christian: I want mine printed on a crystal stein.
Ellen: I'm hoping that if we just make enough of these, eventually somebody will give us an honorary degree in zoology.
Christian: That's probably how it works. While we are not experts, we do try to get our information from trustworthy resources. I think that's it for the intro. Yeah?
Ellen: Yeah. Let's jump right in! Every single passing second that I'm not talking about my animal for this week is physically painful to me and I really want to get to it.
Christian: Yeah, you can't see, but Ellen is a visibly shaking as if a glass being resonated by a sound.
Ellen: I'm vibrating with energy to talk about this animal. I'm so excited about it.
Christian: But you're gonna have to wait cause I'm first!
Ellen: That's right. Christian's up first this week. What do you have for us?
Christian: This week, I have the jaguar (jag-wah), also known as the jaguar.
Ellen: You said jag-wire. That's weird. Why did you say it weird?
Christian: How do you pronounce jag-wire?
Google: That's pronounced "jaguar."
Ellen: Jag-war!
Christian: Jaguar.
Ellen: Thank you.
Christian: G-W-A-R, like that band. Okay. This week I have the jaguar.
Ellen: Thank you.
Christian: Scientific Name, Panthera onca.
Ellen: Panthera... Onca.
Christian: I assume that's how that's pronounced. O-N-C-A.
Ellen: Sounds right.
Christian: This species was submitted by Brandon Everfolly.
Ellen: Who has described the jaguar as his favorite animal.
Christian: It's also a close to home species for us. We have a professional football league named after them, the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Ellen: Yep.
Christian: I don't have any other information about that.
Ellen: I'm sorry guys. We're not sports fans, but we know about the Jaguars cause we live here. But that's really about the end of my information that I have. Apparently if you watch The Good Place, there's a lot of references to them.
Christian: There's also a a chant, but we won't go... We won't go there.
Ellen: No, we won't disturb your families and pets with our... With our cry.
Christian: I'm pulling information this week from once again, Animal Diversity Web, also NationalGeographic.org and, finally, panthera.org. So, a little basics about the jaguar. I'm going to pronounce it differently every time.
Ellen: Please don't. Please do this normal.
Christian: Ja-goor.
Ellen: I hate this episode already.
Christian: Maybe this is why people refer to the football team as the jags.
Ellen: This is a hot mess of an episode.
Christian: I'm learning so much. Adult size, so the jag... You know, the scientific name would be easier in this case. So the jaguar, the head and body length is 5 to 6 feet, or approximately 150 to 180 centimeters.
Ellen: That's a big kitty.
Christian: Yes, very big. Just the body alone is about as long as I am tall, basically. Just the body, because the tail is 27.5 to 36 inches, or approximately 70 to 90 centimeters.
Ellen: Long tail for a long cat.
Christian: Very long. They weigh from 100 to 250 pounds, or 45 to 133 kilograms. And what's interesting about their size is they can vary quite a bit depending on where you find them.
Ellen: Oh, where you find them?
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: Oh, interesting.
Christian: So for example... Well, so first of all, males are larger, but also going back to the geographic point, the largest ones are found in Brazilian Pantanal, while the smaller ones, I should say, the smallest ones are found in Honduras. And speaking of locations, you can kind of get an idea of where they're located based on what I just said. But they are found in 18 countries across Latin America, from Mexico to Argentina, Mexico being the southernmost country in North America, all the way through most of South America. And while that sounds impressive, that's actually smaller than what it used to be.
Ellen: Oh.
Christian: So for example, today, they're rarely spotted in the southwest USA...
Ellen: Hehe. Spotted.
Christian: Heh! No, aesthetics is later!
Ellen: I had to get one good pun in. You always get all the good ones.
Christian: You're right. So yeah, even today you can- there are rare sightings of them in the southwest USA, though there's not thought to have been a breeding population in over 50 years.
Ellen: Wow.
Christian: They're often found in forests, rainforests, scrub forest and swamps. But they're very often found in were called riparian habitats.
Ellen: Riparian?
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: What does that mean?
Christian: Which means areas next to a body of water.
Ellen: Oh, okay.
Christian: So usually river or stream. They belong to the taxonomic family Felidae. That's just the cat family, basically.
Ellen: The kitties.
Christian: But a more interesting evolutionary relative is its genus, Panthera. So that genus is also nicknamed the roaring cats.
Ellen: Roaring cats!
Christian: And the other things that are in there are lions, leopards and tigers.
Ellen: Okay. So these are the ones that roar as opposed to what, mew?
Christian: Mrow. Like cheetahs.
Ellen: Oh, that's true. Oh, I love the sound cheetahs make. It's so cute.
Christian: Yup. I think our own cat is actually doing this to us right now through the door.
Ellen: Hopefully our mics don't pick it up.
Christian: Here's hoping. So I'm just gonna jump right in. First category, effectiveness, how good do they do the things they do?
Ellen: These are physical adaptations.
Christian: Yes. Um, like wings, claws, uhh...
Ellen: They have one of those things.
Christian: Back mounted... Water cannons.
Ellen: Turrets. Yeah. We've talked about an animal with turrets.
Christian: I was referring to Blastoise, but...
Ellen: I was talking about a chameleon, but all right.
Christian: Okay. So effectiveness. I'm giving the jaguar a full 10 out of 10.
Ellen: Not surprising.
Christian: Shouldn't be. Because they have strong jaws that are meant to kill with a single bite. And I will talk a little bit more about that in my ingenuity section, but just know they have very good jaws meant for this purpose.
Ellen: Good chompers.
Christian: Overall, they are built for power, not speed.
Ellen: Really?
Christian: Yes. They're able to do short sprints if they need to, but that's not really where they excel.
Ellen: That makes sense because they live in pretty densely forested areas. Right? Not a lot of really sprinting room.
Christian: Right.
Ellen: Probably not a lot of area for them to necessarily run.
Christian: Yep, exactly.
Ellen: Makes sense.
Christian: They can drag very heavy prey. I'll come back to that in ingenuity, actually.
Ellen: Okay.
Christian: They can climb trees, of course, with their big claws.
Ellen: Big. Meaty. Claws.
Christian: They're good swimmers, which is odd. A lot of the big cats actually go great lengths to avoid bodies of water, but with the jaguar, it not only loves the water, but hunts in it.
Ellen: Hunts in the- what! Hunts IN the water?
Christian: They're very good swimmers.
Ellen: Huh! Like it gets in the water and like, waits for things to...
Christian: It will go after things in the water.
Ellen: What.
Christian: Not just that, but it's an option for it.
Ellen: This is an amphibious cat. It's an all-terrain cat.
Christian: It likes the water. Don't know. It eats lots of different prey. These include peccaries, tapirs, deer, caimans, turtles...
Ellen: Caimans being like, the crocodilian.
Christian: Of South America.
Ellen: Huh.
Christian: Yep.
Ellen: Okay. Get it.
Christian: Turtles, snakes, porcupines...
Ellen: Oh!
Christian: Yeah. I guess it just, uh...
Ellen: Forbidden snack.
Christian: Prickly boy. Fish and large birds. And at the beginning of that list I mentioned peccaries, which I didn't-
Ellen: I think it's a peccary. [pronunciation correction]
Christian: Peccaries?
Ellen: Yeah. I think that's it.
Christian: So anyway, I didn't know what this was prior to reading this. It is a animal that looks a lot like pig...
Ellen: ...Okay.
Christian: Lot like pig.
Ellen: Much like pig, yes.
Christian: But it's actually not the same as the pigs that you and I are used to, which come from Europe. I won't go into any other detail about that because maybe that would be a future animal.
Ellen: You already got to talk about one pig!
Christian: Oh, that's... Did I?
Ellen: You talked about the warthog.
Christian: Yeah, you right.
Ellen: So you did talk about one pig already. Well, maybe when we do a 30 to 50 feral hog segment, then we can come back to the peccaries.
Christian: And they're also, the jaguar is a keystone species. One definition of that phrase is a species on which other species in an ecosystem largely depend, such that if it were removed, the ecosystem would change drastically.
Ellen: I would imagine this would be the case with it being such an Apex Predator.
Christian: Yeah, yeah.
Ellen: That eats literally everything in its sight.
Christian: It's definitely at the top of the food chain. It's really, it's only real threat is humans.
Ellen: Dang. Get countered.
Christian: Yeah. And then finally, for effectiveness, built in camouflage. So the way its fur is, and the patterns, it lends itself to blending in with the shady forest.
Ellen: A lot of times it's really easy to confuse a jaguar with a leopard because they just kind of have a similar sort of shape, and they both are just kind of like brown cat with spots. But you can tell a Jaguar from a leopard because the jaguars spots are in the shapes of rosettes. So, how they're not like a circular spot. It looks like a rose.
Christian: Yeah. Yeah. Which I actually have that term later on in, in the aesthetics part.
Ellen: Oh, okay- well then you do have it then!
Christian: I was just going to talk about what the spots look like. I wasn't going to compare it to the leopard.
Ellen: Oh, okay.
Christian: Um, I think also a big tell is where you are currently located, right? Cause those are different continents.
Ellen: Yeah. Very different. Well, one other thing is that when people talk about a black panther, it could be a jaguar or it could be a leopard.
Christian: That makes sense.
Ellen: It's just either one of those that has melanism. That's all.
Christian: Yes. So, moving on to ingenuity. This is the smart things that does. Tactics, using tools, that sort of thing.
Ellen: Clever boy.
Christian: Once again, full 10 out of 10. So first of all, I alluded to this before, but they're very stealthy. You know, they got those big paws, they have the camouflage, and their main method of hunting is to pounce on prey from concealed spots.
Ellen: Oh, so they hide and wait?
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: Oh, this is a, this is a rogue.
Christian: So that could be from dense vegetatio, that could be from a tree branch, that sort of thing. And now I want to talk about how they kill with a single bite.
Ellen: How they kill with a single bite?
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: With a single bite, yes.
Christian: Well, they go for the single bite. It might take a couple, but what they're going for is two different things. They'll either go for the neck, and what they're going for there is suffocation. Or they'll use their canines to pierce to the back of the skull.
Ellen: Really?
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: So that requires some sort of understanding of the anatomy of the prey that they're going for, that like it will do extra damage if I hit them in these particular spots.
Christian: Yeah. And then, for some kinds of animals, or prey I should say, they might not have both as an option. So for example, there's a very popular video out there that you can see of a jaguar hunting a caiman. It might be labeled as a crocodile, but it's most likely a caiman. You'll see this jaguar's swimming through a river coming up to a sandbank that has a caiman on it, looking the other direction, just kind of basking. Swimming up behind it, gets onto the sandbank and jumps on it and just bites it in the back of the head.
Ellen: Oh my gosh. That takes such confidence.
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: That it has to know for sure that it can take that caiman.
Christian: Yeah. And this one is, it was at least the same size as it, so it's not like a tiny little baby one.
Ellen: That's almost arrogance at that point. It's like, yeah, this crocodile is just chilling, doesn't even know I'm here, doesn't want anything to do with me. I'm just going to go ahead and K.O.
Christian: Hey, um, Icarus, stay away from that sun. That scaly, scaly sun. So yeah, that's an interesting method, I should say. And then also, kind of coming off something I said earlier, is their ability to carry large heavy things. What they do is after they kill their prey, they will carry it off to a secluded spot to eat them. It's been recorded that they can even drag away things as large as the sea turtle.
Ellen: I'm sorry, a sea turtle?
Christian: Yes. A sea turtle.
Ellen: Where did they find a sea turtle in the rainforest?
Christian: On the beach, I guess. Weighing up to 34 kilograms, or 75 pounds.
Ellen: Wow.
Christian: Yes. And that's with its mouth.
Ellen: Yeah. Cause they're having to use all of their paws to climb up, so that's just pure like jaw and neck muscle.
Christian: Yes. And if you see close up pictures of jaguars, you can kind of tell that they have that beefy, beefy jawbone.
Ellen: Yeah. It gives their head a very wide and...
Christian: Almost square.
Ellen: Yeah, very boxy shape. Yeah. It gives them a very broad shape to their head that I think makes their face very definable.
Christian: You know, it's odd. I saw a picture of one yawning, and you could see the inside of its cheeks and whatnot. It honestly reminded me of like, the American pit bull.
Ellen: Yeah. I feel like their fur is not very thick, so you can see sort of the definition of their muscle under their fur, cause it's kind of a thin layer of fur. So you can see like exactly how muscular they are.
Christian: Yes. Speaking of fur, that brings us to the final category: aesthetics. This one's self-explanatory, how...
Ellen: Pretty.
Christian: How pretty they be... 10 out of 10.
Ellen: Across the board, a perfect score!
Christian: Yep.
Ellen: 10, 10, 10! The judges!
Christian: Two of them were sick. Just right off the bat, they're just absolutely beautiful. They're very pretty.
Ellen: I agree.
Christian: Um, so I'm just going to talk about what they look like, for those that may be not so familiar with what they look like. But they have an off-white belly, and their base coat can range from a pale yellow to a reddish brown, and their black spots like we talked about earlier, they are rosette shape. It's on their body and limbs. Melanistic jaguars, like we talked about earlier, they are fairly common and have a black base coat, and the spots are barely visible but they're still there.
Ellen: You can see them in like, the right light.
Christian: Direct sunlight, I feel like.
Ellen: Yeah. Then you can kind of see that the spots are still there.
Christian: Yeah. But, you know, how often are you going to see a jaguar in direct light, right?
Ellen: I mean, we have jaguars at our zoo.
Christian: And they're always sleeping.
Ellen: And they're ALWAYS sleeping. Except for one time, I saw one that was like rolling around on a rock and it was really cute.
Christian: I did see that they are more active around when the sun is setting, in early nighttime.
Ellen: Okay. That would explain it then. Cause I'm always there really, really early in the morning.
Christian: Yeah. They'll still do stuff throughout the day. It's just they're more active at that time.
Ellen: That makes sense.
Christian: But yeah, 10 out of 10. I think they're really cool looking. Like you mentioned, they have very nice fur, their eyes are very striking and they have the teeth and the color, it's just- it all comes together in a nice little package. Miscellaneous info about our jaguar friends: conservation status, they are near threatened based on the IUCN Red List. They've been eradicated from 40% of their historic range. They are often poached for their hide, teeth and paws. So unfortunately-
Ellen: Their paws?
Christian: Yes, their paws.
Ellen: What?
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: That's not something I've heard before, I don't think.
Christian: I'm not sure what the use case is. Probably just taxidermy.
Ellen: A trophy of some sort maybe?
Christian: But yeah, so unfortunately with how beautiful they are there, their hides are in high demand in the illegal poaching market. Um, they're also killed by farmers in an attempt to protect their livestock, cause unfortunately, it's kind of cyclical where you know, as they're losing habitat and prey, sometimes that's their only option, is to resort to killing livestock.
Ellen: It doesn't work out great for the farmers, but you got to do what you gotta do.
Christian: Yeah. Yeah. So the jaguar is the largest cat in the Americas and is the only representative of the genus Panthera. Like I said earlier, Panthera is the roaring cats. So of course you have lions, tigers and leopards are elsewhere in the world.
Ellen: Makes you wonder how the jaguars got over here and all the other roaring cats stayed behind.
Christian: Yeah, I did come across some more prehistoric studies on this species, but I didn't go too deep into it.
Ellen: Oh.
Christian: Yeah. But it's- it's out there for those that are curious. I also want to talk about their babies...
Ellen: YES THANK YOU.
Christian: And this will be my final topic, but their babies are very, very cute. Don't have any other way to describe that, but here's some facts about them.
Christian: Yes!
Christian: Their offspring are called cubs, of course. Females will drive away the males after mating, and especially after the cubs are born. So after that point, it's just Mama. They give birth to an average of two cubs, although it can be anywhere from one to four, and their cubs are born with their eyes closed, like many other cats. And they don't open until they're two weeks old.
Christian: Just little blind kittens!
Christian: So they're little helpless kittens at that point.
Ellen: Oh, bless those little sweeties.
Christian: They nurse for the first five to six months of their life. After that, they start hunting with their mom, but their mom is still largely supplying them with food early on. They're pretty much dependent on the mother until they're two years old. They're kind of by themselves usually, and they only meet up for reproduction.
Ellen: Yeah. They don't travel in packs or anything like that.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: In our local Jacksonville Zoo, a have now two jaguars. Right? They got two new jaguars? Last week I went to the zoo and I actually kind of went to go see the jaguars, but um, I saw one of them and she was just sleeping on a rock, as she tends to do.
Christian: Every time.
Ellen: Yep. That's all they're ever doing is just sleeping on rocks.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: I have gotten some really cute pictures of the ones that the zoo where like, one was like... He was on the rock, but he was like rolling around. Yeah, like doing that kitty cat thing where he was like rubbing his head on a rock and it was really cute. But other than that, they're usually just sleeping.
Christian: I love it.
Ellen: They're really hard to find.
Christian: Oh, like in the exhibit.
Ellen: Yes. They're very hard to find! You can see that like, natural camouflage at work.
Christian: Yep. For sure.
Ellen: They're kind of a big um, point of pride I think for our zoo because the jaguars are kind of our local like, sports team mascot. So people really have a lot of connection to the jaguar around here, which is weird cause like they don't live here.
Christian: Used to, long, long time ago.
Ellen: Yeah. But like way before Jacksonville was a thing. So yeah, it's just kind of weird because it was like, this is not an animal that has anything to do with our city, but it's our sports team mascot, so everybody loves it.
Christian: Yeah. So in the areas that they're found, they have a huge cultural significance, especially with the indigenous peoples of Central and South America. You can see that in prehistoric paintings and depictions, even
Ellen: Lots of Aztec and Mayan art that depicts jaguars. And they're usually of like holy- they're like deities.
Christian: But I can see why. I mean they're pretty impressive.
Ellen: Yeah. Cause I would imagine that way back during the time when these civilizations were kind of in their prime, the jaguar was probably the primary threat. I feel like if you don't have a firearm, you kind of don't stand a chance against a jaguar.
Christian: Probably. So yeah, that's the jaguar.
Ellen: Excellent. Thank you so much! I really enjoyed that. That was really cool.
Christian: No problem.
Ellen: That is our first ever perfect score. Complete total sweep.
Christian: Really? I guess it had to happen eventually.
Ellen: I think it was well earned. I hope it's the first of many.
Christian: We'll see.
Ellen: 10, 10, 10.
Christian: Well now we have the rubric to which...
Ellen: The jaguar is now the gold standard by which every other animal will be measured.
Christian: Exactly.
Ellen: Very good. Thank you, my love.
Christian: Any time.
Ellen: So, before we move on to our next animal, I just want to let you guys know real quick that we have a patreon out there floating around Patreon.com/justthezooofus. That's what we are using to kind of gather some support that will help us grow the show, so we're really, really excited about that. You can get access to some really cool extras, so a feed of the show without ads, which is probably becoming increasingly desirable as we have picked up some new sponsors, so our ad segment might be growing a tad, so if you want to skip all of those, you can do so for as little as $1 per month on our Patreon. We also have other cool things like a patron discord server and I'm going to start sending out photo prints to our patrons once a month, which is going to be a lot of fun. So check us out at Patreon.com/justthezooofus for this week's episode. I want to thank our patrons, Briana Feinberg and Krystina Sanders. Thank you so much for supporting us.
Christian: Yeah, thank you!
Christian: Alright, hun. The time has come.
Ellen: Thank you. Thank God. I'm so excited.
Christian: What is your animal for this week?
Ellen: This week, I am so delighted to be bringing you, Ellen Weatherford presents: the bearded vulture.
Christian: The burb?
Ellen: A big- yeah, the big one.
Christian: Okay!
Ellen: The bearded vulture, also known as the lammergeier. That's their German name, the lammergeier.
Christian: Interesting.
Ellen: Yeah, and that translates to lamb vulture. Or like, lamb taker.
Christian: Uh oh.
Ellen: Yeah, that's a misnomer. They don't do that. The scientific name of the bearded vulture is Gypaetus barbatus.
Christian: I like it.
Ellen: Yes. This species was requested by Jennifer Perez. Thank you, Jennifer.
Christian: Thanks, Jennifer!
Ellen: Yeah, and I'm really glad that you did because I've been really wanting to talk about this animal. This is so good. I'm getting this information from the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, Animal Diversity Web, and the National Audubon Society. If you've never met the bearded vulture, this bird has a length of o1 to 1.25 meters, or 3 to 4 feet. That is the length of the body.
Christian: Oh no.
Ellen: The wingspan of the bearded vulture: up to 2.8 meters, or 9 feet.
Christian: Yeah...
Ellen: A nine foot wingspan.
Christian: Yikes.
Ellen: Yes. This is a living dinosaur. I mean all birds are living dinosaurs, but this one's especially so. This one is SUPER dinosaur.
Christian: It's got the "oomph" to back it up.
Ellen: Now the females, this is interesting- the females tend to be the larger ones.
Christian: Okay!
Ellen: It's really easy to identify bearded vultures. First of all, because of their size. They are absolutely massive, but it's easy to tell them apart from other vultures because bearded vultures have a thick mane of feathers around their head and their neck, which most vultures have that pretty characteristic bald head.
Christian: Right.
Ellen: They don't. They have a very, very thick mane of feathers. This is particularly spectacular because it is white with these black bands around their eyes, so it gives them a very striking, masked appearance.
Christian: Fierce.
Ellen: Yes, but they get their name bearded vulture from a tuft of black bristles that they have underneath their beak that looks like a little... Looks like a little beard poking out. You're going to find these big boys way high up in the mountains throughout Europe, Asia and Africa. You find them in rocky craggy mountainous areas, but you can kind of find them all... They're especially well known in the Pyrenees and the Alps, but you can also find them throughout like the Balkans and even in Africa.
Christian: Okay. I was wondering why it had a German name and that makes sense.
Ellen: Yeah. Their populations are kind of declining in those areas, but you can find them in like the Alps and the Pyrenees.
Christian: Gotcha.
Ellen: Now their taxonomic family is Accipitridae, which we've visited before with the osprey.
Christian: Oh yeah.
Ellen: This is the same taxonomic family as many hawks, eagles, and Old World vultures.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: So I want to take a quick minute to talk about "Old World vultures" versus "New World vultures." These are two different groups. As their names would imply, Old World vultures are found in Africa, Asia and Europe, whereas New World vultures are found in the Americas.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: They're not related. They have some very similar characteristics like the bald head and kind of the hooked beak, they're scavengers, but they're no more related to each other than like, eagles and hawks and stuff like that.
Christian: Interesting.
Ellen: No further relation. So this is an example of convergent evolution. They're separate species that have really nothing to do with each other, but they developed the same traits independently of each other for the same reasons. So both of these groups share the identifiable bald head, which is believed to be an adaptation that keeps their head and their face from overheating.
Christian: Oh, okay.
Ellen: Some people also say that the lack of feathers on their face keeps the blood and the gunk from the carrion from getting their feathers stuck together, but there's not really a lot that kind of shows that. So it's just kind of belief that it's for the cooling factor of keeping their face clean.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: One major difference between the two groups of vultures is that New World vultures rely more heavily on their sense of smell to find their food, whereas Old World vultures are scavenging based on sight, so they actually can't smell very well. They are just using their eyes to find their, I wouldn't say prey cause they're not really hunting, but they're using their eyes to find their food rather than a sense of smell. So, although bearded vultures are usually considered an Old World vulture, they're not actually very closely related to the other Old World vultures. No more related than like a hawk or an eagle.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: So you can tell that they're very different from other vultures by just like, their appearance and the way that they look. Them and Egyptian vultures form this sort of subfamily of the Accipitridae family. So they're kind of their own thing, a little bit. So that's your background on the bearded vulture.
Christian: I'm already very excited.
Ellen: He's great. So I'm gonna move into my ratings for the bearded vulture. First up, we've got effectiveness. For effectiveness, I'm giving the bearded vulture an 8 out of 10.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: So the bearded vulture's diet is really unique in that it consists almost entirely of bones.
Christian: Oh!
Ellen: Just bones. About 80 to 90% of what they eat is bones. Yeah. That's pretty... Not usual.
Christian: Right.
Ellen: That's not very standard fare for most animals. So bones are a really uncommon dietary choice for animals because of how nearly impossible it is to eat and also to digest. So in order to actually eat bone, bearded vultures have an extremely acidic stomach that is strong enough to dissolve bone. So they're rewarded for this adaptation with a food source that ends up being really, really high in calcium. Like turns out if you actually can eat it, it's really, really like just chockfull full of like calories and...
Christian: Like, ah... #iatethebones.
Ellen: I can't believe you found a way to...
Christian: I think I'm the only person on the planet that remembers that commercial.
Ellen: You are definitely the only person on the planet that not only remembers that commercial, but quotes it on at least a daily, if not like... Three to five times a week, you quote this commercial. So if anybody out there still remembers the "I ate the bones" commercial, please connect with Christian because he needs a support group.
Christian: Please...
Ellen: Validate Christian. So not only are the bones themselves very nutritionally dense and high in calcium and pretty good for them to eat, there's also a marrow inside that is just chock full of nutrients. It's very, very good to eat if you can get to it.
Christian: Sure. People eat bone marrow too.
Ellen: Yeah. So that's a nice little treat for them once they break through all the bone in there. And what's also really cool about having a diet based on bone is that there's pretty much no competition for bones.
Christian: Guess so.
Ellen: There's very, very low demand from other predators.
Christian: Except time, I guess.
Ellen: I mean, at the maybe like, century level.
Christian: A glacial pace.
Ellen: Yeah. Like I don't think they-
Christian: I gotta eat this before it goes bad.
Ellen: I don't think they have to worry about that. But so they don't really have to compete for their food with anybody else, other than like other bearded vultures.
Christian: These do not extend to Africa, right?
Ellen: Yes. They're in Africa.
Christian: These are in Africa?
Ellen: Yes.
Christian: So hyenas maybe?
Ellen: I mean they'll- they'll eat them sometimes, but it's not really very important to them. They're really after the meat. So this is just a really interesting and unique food source for them. Now, they have really, really excellent eyesight. It lets them spot their meals from way high up in the sky. So when they're flying around way, way, way up high in the air, they can see well enough to spot the carrion, which is particularly impressive since they're eating dead animals, their prey is not moving. Right? Imagine how good your eyesight has to be to spot a completely still target from way up in the air while you're flying around.
Christian: Probably difficult.
Ellen: Yeah! And when you're flying around in the mountains, like it's just- it's hard to spot stuff already, so yeah, they have good eyesight. I did deduct a couple of points for the fact that they do eat bones, but their beak and claws aren't actually strong enough to break the bones.
Christian: Oh!
Ellen: Yeah. When I saw that they eat bones, I thought, "oh, that must- like they must be strong enough to break through, like a hyena." Right?
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: The hyena has those powerful jaw muscles that lets it just snap right through, but the bearded vulture actually cannot break the bones.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: However... It has a plan.
Christian: Okay...
Ellen: Which brings me to ingenuity. I give the bearded vulture a 10 out of 10 for ingenuity. Even though by itself it is not strong enough to break through the bone, if a bone is too tough for the vulture to break on its own, it grabs the bone in its talons, carries it up high into the air, finds a jagged rocky- like a crag or something like that, and drops the bone from the air, letting it fall, fall down all the way down to the ground and shatter the bone into pieces.
Christian: Huh! I guess I've got to be pretty big bones, huh? Because else you're not gonna get that speed.
Ellen: Yeah. These are like- yeah, these are like femurs and stuff like that. These are like the big chonky bones. So they drop them all the way from up in the sky and the bone falls and uses the sheer force of fall damage to shatter the bone into little bitty bits. And those small pieces are small enough for the vulture to swallow whole.
Christian: Sounds so unpleasant, just the swallowing part mostly.
Ellen: I mean, for us, sure. But that's how they eat the- that's how they eat bones. They swallow the chunks of them whole.
Christian: I guess that's their only option.
Ellen: Yeah. I mean, like I said, they can't exactly chew them. So, yeah, I felt like that was a very, very interesting tactic when you yourself are not strong enough to do the cracking.
Christian: I wonder if there's any recorded events where maybe this bird would drop a bone, I don't know, in the middle of the street.
Ellen: So there is kind of a... An old Greek myth saying there was like, a dude that got killed by a falling tortoise that was dropped from the sky by an eagle that was believed to be a bearded vulture.
Christian: Oh!
Ellen: Yeah, so that was actually the next thing I was going to say, that they use this airdrop strategy to kill tortoises.
Christian: Oh.
Ellen: Yeah. So they use it to break open bones, but they will also use it to prey on tortoises that would otherwise be too tough for them to break through.
Christian: In the story, did the tortoise died?
Ellen: I'm sure. I don't think the tortoise was really the focus of the story.
Christian: It's my focus.
Ellen: I know, I'm way more concerned about whether the tortoise was okay.
Christian: Some Greek guy...
Ellen: So I thought that was really interesting that they're using it to negate that armor so that they can get at the little chewy bits inside. Another pretty smart thing that they do, also concerning fall damage, is that they have been documented cornering larger prey- these are larger prey like ungulates, like goats that you might find up in the mountains or something...
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: They corner them at cliff edges and back them up by intimidating them by flapping their wings. So they have these huge nine foot wide wings. Right?
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: They flap their wings and just make this really big display, like this really big threatening display and the prey gets scared and the vulture presses forward and just backs them up further and further until they fall over the edge of the cliff.
Christian: Dang...
Ellen: Yeah. They just intimidate them into falling off the cliff and then they die.
Christian: I mean, what I'm taking from this is make sure these birds never run out of bones because, jeez, they'll go to great lengths to make bones.
Ellen: Yeah. When they can't find carrion, they will make carrion. So what is pretty cool is that when a bearded vulture spots carrion, when they find like a dead animal that's already died and it's sitting there, they will actually not go straight in for it. So they'll kinda chill nearby and keep an eye on it and they'll wait for other vultures to come in and pick the meat off. So other vultures are there for the meat, so they'll wait for other scavengers to move in, basically clean the carcass off, and then once those scavengers move on to find other carcasses, then the bearded vulture comes in and finishes the job.
Christian: How bizarre is that for the other vultures, do you think? It's like the person waiting, like, "hey, when you finish that pizza, I want the crusts. You better leave the crusts."
Ellen: And you're like, "are, are you- Are you sure? There's like...."
Christian: It's not even cheese-stuffed, bro.
Ellen: Yeah. Like "are you sure you want-" and they're like "GIVE ME THAT CRUST"
Christian: Or you're next!
Ellen: And then they- and then they pick up the crust and bring it to the top of the restaurant and drop it off the roof. Something else that's not bone related to the bearded vulture. When you look at an adult bearded vulture, you might notice that its feathers are bright red or orange. Yeah. They're not naturally like that. They're white. This is actually intentional. The bird is doing this on purpose. So what they do is they bathe in these springs where the water is really, really high in iron and then the iron clings to their feathers and it stains their feathers dark orange or red.
Christian: That's pretty cool.
Ellen: It's really cool! They're doing it on purpose, and you can tell that they're doing it on purpose because when they go back home to their nests, they rub their feathers on their babies and on their eggs to get the iron on them too.
Christian: Huh!
Ellen: Yeah. You can tell that they're doing it on purpose cause they're like trying to spread it.
Christian: But why?
Ellen: So there have been a few suggested reasons for why they're doing this. None of them have really been completely confirmed, but one kind of leading theory is that the iron in the dirt that they're getting in their feathers protects them from parasites, and that it can kind of serve as almost like an antibacterial or something, but that it keeps them healthier and protects them from parasites.
Christian: I have an alternate theory.
Ellen: Well, there's one more.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: Another theory is that the bright colors are a display and that they're doing it for looks either to intimidate rivals or to attract mates. It could be either one.
Christian: Okay, so my alternate theory is related to number two.
Ellen: Okay. What is it?
Christian: Can't eat bones if you ain't cute.
Ellen: There is also the third theory that they're in it for the gram. They're doing it for the aesthetic. That could be it.
Christian: Treat yourself.
Ellen: Yeah.
Christian: Bearded vultures deserve fashion too.
Ellen: They do. You're right and you know what? They excel at it. So yeah, I gave them some points for that. Whatever their reasoning may be, they sure do seem dead set on it because apparently they will do this even in captivity. So this is a behavior that they don't necessarily have to learn from their parents, this is something that they will do even if- they will do it in captivity, if they're left undisturbed. So they won't do it if you're watching them. Yeah, it's pretty interesting.
Christian: It doesn't want to give away the trade secrets.
Ellen: They're apparently very private. Like there's a lot of things in captivity that like they won't... They won't do their normal stuff if they're in captivity and like, being observed. They're very secretive.
Christian: Can't let us see how they blend their rouge.
Ellen: You mean you're not going to find any bearded vulture makeup tutorials on Youtube?
Christian: Check out this eyeliner, with the wings.
Ellen: I can't believe you've done this. I don't wear makeup, but I find makeup tutorial videos so soothing to watch. I love watching them. I love watching people do makeup, even though I don't wear makeup myself. So I would love to see a bearded vulture makeup tutorial. I would love that.
Christian: I've unfortunately expended all of my knowledge and vocabulary about makeup.
Ellen: I know you're at your limit. I'm sorry to have done this to you. Contour, you got that one?
Christian: That sounds like a bird.
Ellen: That's a condor. *gasp* Condor contours! That's going to be my new youtube channel. It's going to be all about vultures and their beauty regimen.
Christian: Very good.
Ellen: So bearded vultures are normally solitary unless they are part of a breeding pair. So during their mating season, they will mate and form these duos. So when they're breeding, a male and a female- or, on rare occasions, two males and a female...
Christian: Okay...
Ellen: ...Will share their territory and kind of work together to protect their nest and feed their offspring. So there have been actually some recorded cases of triads with two males. They don't particularly enjoy it. They still fight a lot. They still fight a lot, but they will at least...
Christian: But not enough to like...
Ellen: They won't kill each other.
Christian: Or to go and do their own thing.
Ellen: Yeah. Not enough to leave, I guess. So what is kind of interesting about bearded vultures, as opposed to other species of vultures, is that they feed their offspring actual carrion. They don't... They don't regurgitate to their young, they bring the food back to the young and give it to them.
Christian: Can you imagine regurgitating bone shards?
Ellen: Oh my god. I mean then you're-
Christian: I don't know how it gets down in the first place. I don't want to chance it coming back up.
Ellen: So maybe that's why they bring the carrion back instead of. uh- But so they do bring the softer things back for the babies. They'll bring back meat or something that's a little bit easier for the babies to eat. Now young bearded vultures actually engage in play.
Christian: Ooh!
Ellen: So what they do is they'll fly really high up in the air and then they'll do these dive bombs down towards the ground. And while they're on their way towards the ground, they will do all sorts of really cool tricks. Like they flip and they roll and all these other acrobatic sort of displays. Um, so these are really important skills for them because they'll benefit them later in life when they're fighting to protect their territory, or to court a mate. Actually a bearded vultures that are courting each other will do these insanely technical like sky dances where they fly all around each other and do all these crazy tricks where they tumble in the air and they'll like, grapple with each other and they'll actually fly towards each other and like fall to the ground and like grapple as they're falling.
Christian: Well. Yeah, that's, that's how we met. Remember? We, um... We, we each had a blue angel fighter jet and then we did these sick stunts in the sky.
Ellen: We did. Not a lot of people know this, but we're actually Mech anime characters.
Christian: NANI?!
Ellen: We're actually anime characters and we've been, uh, we have been Gundam this whole time.
Christian: Am I Gundam?
Ellen: Yes. We're all Gundam. So like the shoebill- which we talked about way, way, way, way, way back when, I think that was episode six we talked about the shoe bill- When they lay their eggs, they have a backup chick just in case the first chick dies.
Christian: Huh.
Ellen: Yeah. This is kind of a common motif, huh, in a animal moms, that they...
Christian: You pick the worst animal moms.
Ellen: Kinda have a backup baby.
Christian: Wait. Are we still in ingenuity?
Ellen: Yes.
Christian: And you gave a...
Ellen: 10.
Christian: *suspiciously* Hmmm...
Ellen: Which I know- Okay. So the reason I... I actually think I gave the shoebill some ingenuity points for doing this.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: But the reason I took them off for the quokka is that the quokka actively murders her children.
Christian: No it doesn't!
Christian: Well, she won't hesitate to.
Christian: Just stabs and throws the corpse at the thing.
Ellen: Well, she yeets them onto the ground and leaves them to die, so she's a little bit meaner than the- this is more of the sort of thing where they will have two babies and then the one that's older and stronger they will prefer and then a lot of times, with the younger one, they just won't feed it. Like they won't even bother with it and they'll die.
Christian: No, I get it. It's like Pokemon. Catch two Pidgeys, get rid of the weaker one.
Ellen: Yeah, it's- they're IV farming.
Christian: Yep.
Ellen: They're trying to catch the one with better IVs. But so, the chick that hatches later than the other one usually dies pretty quickly and then is fed to the other chick. I mean, it seems to be working out for them nicely.
Christian: Not for the second chick! That's okay, I guess.
Ellen: Yeah. So. That's my 10 out of 10 for their ingenuity. I think they're just, their behavior is just fascinating. They're a really, really interesting animal. And that brings us to our final category for the bearded vulture: aesthetics. I also gave it a 10 out of 10 for aesthetics. This is such a beautiful bird. I- in my notes for this section, I have one word and one word only. One bullet. One word. Wow.
Christian: Such beauty.
Ellen: It's just, wow, this is really gorgeous bird. And especially when you get that fiery red in there. Gosh. And it's like they're intentionally making themselves prettier. It's so cool. So yeah, this is just a really beautiful bird. They have this really incredible face where they have this long, curved beak and their eyes are this bright red and it's surrounded by these black bands. You know I'm crazy about a good face mask. Any sort of animal with like a built-in bandit sort of look to it. Oh my gosh, I love it. And then they just have that really magnificent mane. It's very fluffy and their feathers are very thick and billowy and it's just very majestic. Everything about it is perfect and I love it. So 10 out of 10 for aesthetics. I love this bird.
Christian: Alright.
Ellen: If you've never seen one and you have no idea what I'm talking about, Google bearded vulture right now and you're welcome. So I'm going to wrap up the bearded vulture with some miscellaneous information. Their conservation status is near threatened with populations decreasing. A common cause of death for bearded vultures is collision with power lines or other manmade structures, but according to the IUCN, the biggest threat to the bearded vulture and a lot of other vulture species is indirect poisoning.
Christian: Ohh.
Ellen: Yeah. So a lot of times insecticides or other more serious poisons are placed in bait and set up to bait other predators like foxes or wolves that are more prone to picking off livestock. So this kind of makes farmers upset and they don't like it, they want to kill the foxes and the wolves, so they set out bait with poison and unfortunately then the vultures will come and eat it and they themselves will get poisoned and die. Even though they're not really the target, they still will suffer for it. Now this is often done illegally, so there are a lot of controls in place for like what kind of insecticides you can use. A lot of times people will just do it anyway just because they want to kind of protect their livestock. So right now, there's currently a campaign against this. This campaign is called the Balkan Anti-Poisoning Project, and they're putting in a lot of work to raise awareness and prevent the both intentional and unintentional killing of wildlife like the bearded vultures. If you're listening to this and you currently set out poison bait for any sort of wildlife, don't do that. Actually, people in our area sometimes will do this. They will set out poison traps for feral cats or, I don't know, raccoons or coyotes or something. I have definitely heard of people in Jacksonville setting out poison traps for different animals for whatever reason, but then that ends up then affecting cats or dogs or possums or other sort of animals that aren't necessarily hurting anybody. Stop doing that. Don't set out poison traps for anybody for any reason. Just don't do it. And that's all I've got. That's the end of that for me.
Christian: Well thank you, babe. It's a very good bird.
Ellen: You're welcome. Yeah, I was telling you earlier this week that I think the bearded vulture is my new favorite animal. It's just the best one. Number one, best animal.
Christian: Glam bird.
Ellen: Uh, now that we're done with our animals, we like to do this segment at the end where we read some responses that we've gotten from our audience. Our audience members are pretty great and we love you all and you are delightful and many of you are zoological and ecological professionals and have a lot of really interesting things to contribute. So we like to give you guys an opportunity to weigh in at the end here. So I have two responses I want to read. The Jungle Gym Queen on Twitter, who can be found at @junglegymqueen, pointed out in response to our manta ray segment in episode 18 that giant manta rays have actually been documented passing the mirror self-recognition test. This is a test that indicates self-awareness, and therefore implied to be high levels of cognitive function. So I kinda dug into this a little bit to see, you know, how this was done. So this test was performed in a study by Dr. Scilla Ari and Dr. Dominic D'Agostino. This was in 2016, and what they did was they exposed these two captive giant manta rays to a mirror and observed their responses. The manta rays responded to their image in the mirror, not with social displays, so they have certain behaviors that they will exhibit when they see another manta ray...
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: They didn't do that though, as you would expect them to behave towards another manta ray. But instead, they showed these frequent, unusual and repetitive movements in front of the mirror. So things like circling or doing something over and over again that they were doing in front of the mirror that they don't normally do. This suggests that they did understand the reflection to be not another manta ray, but themselves. Yeah. So what do you think, babe? Do you think that factors in, do you want to retroactively update their ingenuity score?
Christian: I don't remember what I gave it for ingenuity.
Ellen: I think you gave them a seven.
Christian: Let's bump it up by one, then.
Ellen: Okay. Plus one to ingenuity.
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: Great. So yeah, thank you. Jungle Gym Queen.
Christian: Yes, thank you.
Ellen: Who I believe also runs a Facebook page under the name, The Nagging Naturalist. So yeah, go check all that content out. It's very good.
Christian: Love alliteration.
Ellen: Yes, I know you do. And the other thing I wanted to include was that George Diaz on Twitter said, uh, I'm assuming this is in response to our giant panda segment, which we did in episode three, he says, "I'm surprised you didn't mention that there are only two pandas that are not owned by China, but in fact owned by Mexico. They reside in a zoo in Mexico City and their names are Xuan Xuan and Shin Shin. They're a gift from China back in 1975, second generation, first to be born in Mexico."
Christian: Interesting.
Ellen: Yeah, so I also did a little bit of digging into that as well. Back before the 80s, China would often give pandas to other countries as diplomatic gifts, tokens of affection from China to other countries. So actually the U.S. received some, Canada received some, a lot of different countries in the world received these gifts of pandas and Mexico got some too. And currently Mexico is the only country that still owns like, the descendants of those pandas that they received from China.
Christian: Oh, okay.
Ellen: Yeah, that's just some, some additional information.
Christian: That's interesting.
Ellen: That there are two pandas in the world that belong to Mexico.
Christian: Well cool. Hopefully they are able to keep the line going.
Ellen: Yeah. So thank you George for pointing that out to us.
Christian: Thank you.
Ellen: So yeah, that's what we've got this week. Thank you so much for joining us. This was a lot of fun and we're really, really grateful for everybody that has been listening and everybody who has been rating and reviewing, that means a lot to us. We get some really cool, we get some really nice reviews and that always makes us really happy. So thank you for doing that.
Christian: And thank you for your word of mouth to your friends, telling them about us.
Ellen: Yeah, that's really great. We're always really excited to have new people join us. It's really fun. So you can connect with us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Just search the title of the show. That'll bring you to us. Please, please, please come hang out with us in our Facebook group cause it's poppin. The title of the Facebook group is "Just the Zoo of Us: Official Friend Squad!" And it is a lot of fun. We have had really fun things like we had a poll going on last night about whether you prefer the ranger or the druid when wanting to incorporate animals into your D&D party. So we've been- which that was also on Twitter too.
Christian: Yeah, I saw.
Ellen: Yeah, so we've just been having a lot of fun out there. Come hang out with us on Facebook or on Twitter or you know, wherever you're... Wherever you most enjoy participating in social media. If you have an animal species that you'd like to hear us review, you could submit those to me at my email address: ellen@justthezooofus.com, and last note, I would like to thank Louie Zong for the use of his song "Adventuring" off of his album Bee Sides.
Christian: Yes. Thank you so much.
Ellen: We love it. Thank you so much for letting us have that. It really sets a nice tone for our show and we really love it.
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: All right. That's all I got. You want to go get some pizza?
Christian: I would love to get some pizza.
Ellen: Let's go get some pizza.
Christian: Yesss.
Ellen: Bye.
Christian: Bye everyone!