Birds
King Vulture
Sarcoramphus papa · also called king vulture, white vulture
The king vulture is a scavenger dressed like royalty — a big white-and-black vulture of the Central and South American forests whose bald head is splashed with orange, red, purple, blue, and yellow, topped by a floppy orange wattle. It earns its name at the carcass, where its powerful bill opens what the smaller vultures cannot.
Overview
King vultures live in lowland tropical forest, forest edge, and nearby savanna from southern Mexico to northern Argentina. They are almost pure scavengers, feeding on carrion from big mammal carcasses to dead fish. They soar high over the forest for much of the day and are thinly distributed, each bird covering a wide area.
The head
The bald, vividly multicoloured head — orange, red, purple, blue, yellow, with black lashes and a wrinkled orange caruncle over the bill — is unlike any other American vulture’s. As in all vultures the baldness keeps the head clean inside a carcass, and the skin’s colour may signal health and status, reducing conflict.
The carcass-opener
The king vulture has the strongest, most hooked bill of the New World vultures and can tear open tough hide that defeats the smaller black and turkey vultures. Those species often wait for a king vulture to break in, then feed on what it exposes — making it a keystone of the scavenger community.
Finding food
Its sense of smell is poor for a vulture, so it hunts by sight — watching for turkey vultures (which do smell carrion) spiralling down, and following them to the carcass it can then open.
Status
The king vulture is Least Concern but slowly declining. Naturally sparse, it is sensitive to forest clearance and the loss of the large animals whose carcasses it needs, though it has escaped the poisoning-driven crashes that devastated Old World vultures.
King Vulture: common questions
Why is the king vulture so colourful when other vultures are drab?
Its bare head is patterned in orange, red, purple, blue, and yellow skin, with a fleshy orange caruncle draped over the bill and dark eyelashes — nothing like the plain red or black heads of other American vultures. The colours are not fully explained. As with all vultures the bald head is functional, keeping feathers out of the way and clean while the bird feeds inside a carcass, and the skin's condition and colour may honestly signal the bird's health and status to others at a carcass, reducing conflict. It may also play a role in courtship. The vividness is unusual, and it is part of why the species is called the "king."
Why do other vultures let it feed first?
At a carcass in the Neotropics, black vultures and turkey vultures are more numerous but smaller and weaker-billed, and the tough hide of a large dead mammal can defeat them — they can feed at natural openings (eyes, mouth, wounds) but cannot always break in. The king vulture's larger size and much stronger, hooked bill let it tear the skin open. Once it has done so, the smaller vultures move in and feed on the exposed flesh, often crowding around the king vulture. Whether the smaller birds truly "defer" out of a social hierarchy or simply cannot compete physically is debated, but the practical effect is that the king vulture is a keystone carcass-opener that the whole scavenger community depends on.
How does the king vulture find carcasses without a good sense of smell?
It relies on vision and on other birds. Turkey vultures have an exceptional sense of smell and can detect the gases of early decomposition from the air, so they find carcasses first, especially under a forest canopy where a carcass is hidden from above. King vultures soar high, watch for turkey vultures spiralling down toward a food source, and follow them to it. Because the king vulture can then open the carcass, this is a two-way relationship — the turkey vulture leads the way, the king vulture provides access. King vultures also spot carcasses directly in open areas and along rivers.
Is the king vulture endangered?
It is currently listed as Least Concern because it still has a very large range across Central and South America and remains common in areas of intact lowland forest. However, its population is assessed as slowly decreasing. It is naturally sparse — each bird ranges over a wide area — so it is sensitive to habitat loss as tropical forest is cleared, and it can be affected by hunting, by the decline of the large wild animals whose carcasses it depends on, and, like all vultures, potentially by poisons in carcasses, though it has not suffered the catastrophic poisoning-driven crashes seen in Asian and African vultures.