Animal Diversity Web

Ge­o­graphic Range

The hooded vul­ture (Necrosyrtes monachus), is an old world vul­ture en­demic to Africa. This vul­ture is dis­trib­uted widely through­out sub-sa­ha­ran Africa's urban cen­ters and sa­van­nas. Their adap­ta­tions to in­creased human pop­u­la­tions have al­lowed hooded to vul­tures to stay fairly sta­ble through­out their ge­o­graphic range com­pared to most vul­tures. Abun­dance is high­est along the west side of the hooded vul­tures range, and in cities like Accra and Kam­pala. (Gbogbo, et al., 2016; Kibu­ule, 2016; Thi­ol­lay, 2006)

• Biogeographic Regions
• ethiopian
  • native

Habi­tat

Hooded vul­tures oc­cupy a wide va­ri­ety of habi­tats, and their fa­mil­iar­ity with hu­mans makes them a large pres­ence in urban cen­ters and near agri­cul­ture. Their more typ­i­cal habi­tat would in­clude open grass­land, for­est edge, wooded sa­vanna, deserts and along coasts. Any­where with trees high enough (hooded vul­tures pre­fer to nest >15m high) and suf­fi­cient car­rion can sup­port the hooded vul­ture. Found as high as 4,000m above sea level, hooded vul­tures are most abun­dant below 1,800m. (Adang, et al., 2019; Camp­bell, 2009)

• Habitat Regions
• tropical
• terrestrial

• Terrestrial Biomes
• savanna or grassland
• scrub forest

• Other Habitat Features
• urban
• agricultural

• Range elevation

  0 to 4000 m

  0.00 to 13123.36 ft

• Average elevation

  1800 m

  5905.51 ft

Phys­i­cal De­scrip­tion

The hooded vul­ture is a rel­a­tively small vul­ture, stand­ing around 67-70cm. They have a long thin beak, with the upper mandible curl­ing down­wards at the end. Strong toes are de­vel­oped for walk­ing and run­ning rather than grab­bing prey. Short, beige downy feath­ers are pre­sent along the back of the neck. The pink­ish col­ored face re­mains un­cov­ered, and their large blue eyes are promi­nent. Plumage is al­most en­tirely dark brown, with a white patch on the upper breast, and there is no sex­ual di­mor­phism. Fe­males are gen­er­ally slightly larger than males. Hooded vul­tures have rel­a­tively large wingspans for soar­ing, and typ­i­cally weigh 1.5-2.6kg. Ju­ve­niles look sim­i­lar to adults, but are gen­er­ally darker, and more plain, often with a pale blue face. Hooded vul­tures fre­quently perch hunched over, with their wings going straight down. (Adang, et al., 2019; Kibu­ule, 2016)

• Other Physical Features
• endothermic
• bilateral symmetry

• Sexual Dimorphism
• sexes alike

• Range mass

  1.5 to 2.6 kg

  3.30 to 5.73 lb

• Range length

  67 to 70 cm

  26.38 to 27.56 in

• Range wingspan

  155 to 180 cm

  61.02 to 70.87 in

Re­pro­duc­tion

At the end of the rainy sea­son, hooded vul­tures begin to breed in their monog­a­mous pairs. This tim­ing en­sures that there will be plenty of food for the grow­ing chick as the rains will re­turn veg­e­ta­tion and her­bi­vores to the area. (Adang, et al., 2019; Mon­ad­jem, et al., 2016; Vi­rani, et al., 2011)

• Mating System
• monogamous

Hooded vul­tures nest in just below the canopy of tall trees, and build their nests out of sticks and line it with fresh veg­e­ta­tion at the be­gin­ning of the nest­ing sea­son. Nests are then re-used year after year. Courtship dis­plays are fairly basic, and gen­er­ally in­volve the male swoop­ing down on the fe­male. Some­times how­ever, males will do a slight dance by mov­ing in light cir­cles with its claws held out. Each year the fe­male lays a sin­gle egg, and it is in­cu­bated for about 46 days. Fe­males typ­i­cally spend most of their times sit­ting on the egg while the male will bring back food. Upon hatch­ing, the chick re­quires con­stant at­ten­tion, and it is to­tally re­liant upon its par­ents for food. The chick will stay re­liant on its par­ents for food for about 6 months. After around 120 days, the fledged vul­ture will be about the same size as its par­ents, and will soon com­plete its first flight. The vul­ture will then strike out on its own, gen­er­ally at about 6 months of age. Sex­ual ma­tu­rity in hooded vul­tures is not pro­vided in the lit­er­a­ture, but we can as­sume ma­tu­rity will be around 3 or 4 years based on other vul­tures. (Adang, et al., 2019; Mon­ad­jem, et al., 2016; Read­ing, et al., 2018)

• Key Reproductive Features
• iteroparous
• seasonal breeding
• gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate)
• sexual
• oviparous

• Breeding interval

  Once yearly

• Breeding season

  Typically at the end of the local rainy season

• Average eggs per season

  1

• Range time to hatching

  44 to 51 days

• Average time to hatching

  46 days

• Range fledging age

  80 to 130 days

• Average fledging age

  120 days

• Average time to independence

  6 months

Fe­males typ­i­cally spend most of their times sit­ting on the egg while the male will bring back food. Upon hatch­ing, the chick re­quires con­stant at­ten­tion, and it is to­tally re­liant upon its par­ents for food. The chick will stay re­liant on it's par­ents for food for about 5 months. (Adang, et al., 2019)

• Parental Investment
• precocial
• male parental care
• female parental care
• pre-fertilization
  • protecting
    • female
• pre-hatching/birth
  • provisioning
    • male
  • protecting
    • female
• pre-weaning/fledging
  • provisioning
    • male
    • female
  • protecting
    • female
• pre-independence
  • provisioning
    • male
    • female
  • protecting
    • male
    • female

Lifes­pan/Longevity

There is no in­for­ma­tion on lifes­pan re­ported in the lit­er­a­ture.

Be­hav­ior

Hooded vul­tures are a shy bird, but they have adapted very well to the pres­ence of hu­mans. These vul­tures will fre­quently visit cities and end up in close prox­im­ity to hu­mans. Hooded vul­tures are not highly so­cial, and are typ­i­cally seen soar­ing in monog­a­mous pairs or alone. Monog­a­mous pairs will roost to­gether through­out the year Tak­ing ad­van­tage of its rel­a­tive light weight, hooded vul­tures are the first vul­tures to start soar­ing in the morn­ing be­cause they do not need the strong ther­mals that come out later in the day. This makes it so that they are usu­ally the first vul­tures to ar­rive at a car­cass. At night, hooded vul­tures will re­turn to their nest until morn­ing. It is still up to de­bate on whether hooded vul­tures are ter­ri­to­r­ial or not. Adults have been doc­u­mented liv­ing in the same area for sev­eral years, some­times they will even have nests as lit­tle as 50 me­ters away from each other. There have been sight­ings of talon grap­pling among hooded vul­tures how­ever, which does sug­gest ter­ri­to­r­ial phys­i­cal be­hav­ior. Per day, these vul­tures typ­i­cally fly around 45 kilo­me­ters per day. (Adang, et al., 2019; ; Read­ing, et al., 2018)

• Key Behaviors
• arboreal
• glides
• diurnal
• motile
• sedentary

Home Range

Home ranges are much smaller dur­ing the breed­ing sea­son as com­pared to non-breed­ing, when there is no need to fre­quently re­turn to the nest. Home range in the non-breed­ing sea­son is around 23,000 square kilo­me­ters, and shrinks to around 11,000 square kilo­me­ters dur­ing the nest­ing sea­son. How­ever, this is the only in­for­ma­tion on home range cur­rently avail­able, and sam­ple size is an issue (Read­ing, et al., 2018)

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Per­cep­tion

Hooded vul­tures rely mainly on there ad­vanced sense of sight to per­ceive their en­vi­ron­ment. The rea­son for the bare skin on the face of hooded vul­ture and many other species has been de­bated. This can have mul­ti­ple pur­poses in­clud­ing sex­ual se­lec­tion, ther­mal reg­u­la­tion, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It is thought that in vul­tures a vi­brant red face could be a sign of high fit­ness, as it is en­er­get­i­cally costly to de­velop this. Usu­ally silent, the hooded vul­ture will make shrill squeals at car­casses and at the nest site. Dur­ing cop­u­la­tion they will also let out a shrill whis­tle. (Negro, et al., 2006)

• Communication Channels
• visual
• acoustic

• Perception Channels
• visual
• tactile
• acoustic
• chemical

Food Habits

Hooded vul­tures are highly op­por­tunis­tic scav­engers. Vul­tures are highly adapted to be able to di­gest the de­cay­ing car­rion they con­sume. The heads of vul­tures con­tain a di­verse mi­cro­biome that can out­com­pete other harm­ful bac­te­ria that may be pre­sent in a car­cass. The di­ges­tive tract has an ex­tremely low pH, around 1 or 2, that kills off harm­ful bac­te­ria en­ter­ing the body. Hooded vul­tures are typ­i­cally the first among vul­ture species to ar­rive at kills made by car­ni­vores in rural areas of south­ern Africa. When ar­riv­ing at car­rion, hooded vul­tures will begin feed­ing by grab­bing small por­tions with their beak and then run­ning off to swal­low it away from oth­ers. Since hooded vul­tures are smaller than most oth­ers, they can be pushed away from the feed­ing site by mam­mals or larger vul­tures like the white-backed and lap­pet faced, so the abil­ity to ar­rive first is vital for their feed­ing. Hooded vul­tures tend to stay the longest at car­casses as well, even after there is no meat left. They then pro­ceed to pick away at the bones and skin avail­able. Along coast­lines hooded vul­tures will feed on mus­sels, mol­lusks, and any dead fish avail­able to them. Hooded vul­tures are also very preva­lent in urban areas, es­pe­cially those that have meat pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties. In these areas where human waste is avail­able, the hooded vul­tures com­fort with human pres­ence leaves them with only the com­pe­ti­tion of pied crows for car­rion. Hooded vul­tures have also been doc­u­mented fol­low­ing farm equip­ment and other ground dis­tur­bances where they will feed on grubs and grasshop­pers. The hooded vul­tures tough feet are adapted to for them to be strong walk­ers and run­ners as they are on their feet most of the day. (Camp­bell, 2009; Gbogbo, et al., 2016; Petrides, 1959; Waite and Tay­lor, 2015)

• Primary Diet
• carnivore
  • scavenger

• Animal Foods
• carrion
• insects
• mollusks

Pre­da­tion

Due to their diet of car­rion and com­plex mi­cro­biome, hooded vul­tures have no con­sis­tent preda­tors. Rarely a nest may be raided by preda­tory birds, but vul­tures are gen­er­ally not preyed upon. (Waite and Tay­lor, 2015)

Ecosys­tem Roles

Vul­ture species world­wide are vital in the process of re­turn­ing or­ganic ma­te­ri­als back to the soil. Vul­tures, in­clud­ing the hooded vul­ture, cleanse the en­vi­ron­ment of car­rion which can be­come a breed­ing ground of po­ten­tially harm­ful bac­te­ria and dis­eases. Car­rion sites can quickly be­come a hot bed of dis­ease trans­mis­sion for mam­malian scav­engers, but the pres­ence of vul­tures lim­its mam­malian con­tact with these sites, es­sen­tially pro­tect­ing many vital preda­tors. Specif­i­cally in Africa, the hooded vul­ture pro­tects im­por­tant preda­tors from trans­mit­ting dis­eases among them­selves. Hooded vul­tures are also used by lions and hye­nas in order to seek out avail­able car­rion; how­ever, mam­mals are typ­i­cally much slower to car­rion than vul­tures. The car­cass will typ­i­cally be stripped of the ma­jor­ity of meat be­fore mam­malian scav­engers reach it, lim­it­ing the dis­ease trans­mis­sion po­ten­tial. In a study in the Serengeti, it was found that 84% of ex­per­i­men­tally placed car­casses were com­pletely con­sumed by vul­tures be­fore any mam­mals ar­rived on the scene. (Ogada, et al., 2011; Plaza, et al., 2019)

• Ecosystem Impact
• biodegradation
• keystone species

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Pos­i­tive

Since hooded vul­tures are one of the most com­mon scav­engers around urban areas of Africa, they are es­pe­cially im­por­tant to peo­ple. Around cities, hooded vul­tures are vital for the re­moval of car­rion, which could oth­er­wise be­come a breed­ing ground of dis­ease. For ex­am­ple, in India vul­ture pop­u­la­tions have de­clined greatly, and feral dogs have taken their place as pri­mary scav­engers. This has al­lowed for ra­bies to spread wildly through­out their pop­u­la­tions. One study shows this has caused an es­ti­mated 34 bil­lion dol­lar in­crease in health care costs in India from 1993-2006. Vul­tures on the other hand, are a free way to dis­pose of or­ganic waste. (Ogada, et al., 2011)

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Neg­a­tive

Hooded vul­tures can in­fre­quently be hit by cars as they fre­quently scav­enge road­side car­rion; how­ever, there is no data on the fre­quency of these oc­cur­rences. This is the only neg­a­tive to be found in the lit­er­a­ture.

Con­ser­va­tion Sta­tus

Hooded vul­tures have the most sta­ble pop­u­la­tion of any vul­ture species in Africa. This is most likely due to their adap­ta­tion to in­ter­act with hu­mans in cities. How­ever, the species is still listed as crit­i­cally en­dan­gered ac­cord­ing to the IUCN Red List. The most im­por­tant threat to hooded vul­ture pop­u­la­tions is the fre­quent use of pes­ti­cides in rural Africa. These pes­ti­cides are used to tar­get preda­tors to re­move them from their land, or to tar­get her­bi­vores to stop them from eat­ing their crop. Vul­tures are fre­quently a vic­tim of these pes­ti­cides, and many species are de­clin­ing rapidly. Even when ap­plied in the ap­pro­pri­ate doses for ap­proved tar­gets, vul­tures are still vul­ner­a­ble to these pes­ti­cides. Hooded vul­tures are also traded as part of a tra­di­tional med­i­cine in the il­le­gal wildlife trade. (Kibu­ule, 2016; Plaza, et al., 2019)

• IUCN Red List

  Critically Endangered

• US Migratory Bird Act

  No special status

• CITES

  Appendix I

• State of Michigan List

  No special status

Con­trib­u­tors

DANIEL JUDD (au­thor), North­ern Michi­gan Uni­ver­sity, Alec Lind­say (ed­i­tor), North­ern Michi­gan Uni­ver­sity, Tanya Dewey (ed­i­tor), Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan-Ann Arbor.

Ref­er­ences

Adang, K., D. Tanko, K. Saliu, U. Ab­dul­wa­hab. 2019. Breed­ing Record of the Hooded Vul­ture Necrosyrtes monachus (Tim­minek, 1823) at Emi Abumo Woro, Kogi State, Nige­ria. Jour­nal of Bi­o­log­i­cal Sci­ences, 12: 222-230.

Bohmer, C., O. Duriez, J. Pre­voteau, A. Abourachid. 2019. A Gulper, rip­per and scrap­per: anatomy of the neck in three species of vul­tures. Jour­nal of Anatomy.

Camp­bell, M. 2009. Fac­tors for the Pres­ence of Avian Scav­engers in Accra and Ku­masi, Ghana. Area, 41: 341-349.

Camp­bell, M. 2019. Talon-Grap­pling and Cart­wheel­ing of Hooded Vul­tures in South Africa. Jour­nal of Rap­tor Re­search, 53: 353-354.

Duriez, O., K. Akiko, C. Tromp, G. Dell-Omo, A. Vys­sot­ski, F. Sar­razin, Y. Robert-Couder. 2014. How Cheap Is Soar­ing Flight in Rap­tors? A Pre­lim­i­nary In­ves­ti­ga­tion in Freely-Fly­ing Vul­tures.. PLoS ONE 9.

Gbogbo, F., R. Japheth, V. Awotwe-Pratt. 2016. Some Im­por­tant Ob­ser­va­tions on the Pop­u­la­tions of Hooded Vul­tures Necrosyrtes Monachus in Urban Ghana.

In­ter­na­tional Jour­nal of Zo­ol­ogy

Kibu­ule, M. 2016. POP­U­LA­TION STA­TUS OF THE CRIT­I­CALLY EN­DAN­GERED HOODED VUL­TURE NECROSYRTES MONACHUS IN UGANDA’S MAJOR URBAN CEN­TRES. African Bird Club.

Mo­hamed, H., J. Granadeiro, H. Mon­teiro, A. Nuno, M. Lecoq, P. Car­doso, A. Re­galla, P. Catry. 2018. Not in Wilder­ness: African Vul­ture Strong­holds Re­main in Areas with High Human Den­sity. PLoS ONE.

Mon­ad­jem, A., K. Wolter, W. Neser. 2016. Hooded Vul­ture (Necrosyrtes monachus) and African White-backed (Gyps africanus) nest­ing at the Olifants River Pri­vate Na­ture Re­serve, Limpopo Province, South Africa. Mam­mal Re­search In­sti­tute, 24: 161-173.

Negro, J., J. Sara­sola, F. Fari­nas, I. Zo­rilla. 2006. Func­tion and Oc­cur­rence of Fa­cial Flush­ing in Birds. Com­par­a­tive Bio­chem­istry and Phys­i­ol­ogy Part A: Mol­e­c­u­lar & In­te­gra­tive Phys­i­ol­ogy, 143: 78-84.

Ogada, D., F. Keesing, M. Vi­rani. 2011. Drop­ping dead: causes and con­se­quences of vul­ture pop­u­la­tion de­clines world­wide. The New York Acad­emy of Sci­ences, 1249: 57-71.

Petrides, G. 1959. Com­pe­ti­tion for Food be­tween Five Species of East African Vul­tures. The Auk, 76: 104-106.

Plaza, P., M. Mar­tinez-Lopez, S. Lam­ber­tucci. 2019. The Per­fect Threat: Pes­ti­cides and Vul­tures. Sci­ence of The Total En­vi­ron­ment, 687: 1207-1218.

Read­ing, R., J. Bradley, P. Han­cock, R. Gar­bett, M. Se­le­batso, G. Maude. 2018. Home-range size and move­ment pat­terns of Hooded Vul­tures Necrosyrtes monachus in south­ern Africa. Jour­nal of African Or­nithol­ogy, 13: 56-62.

Thi­ol­lay, J. 2006. The De­cline of Rap­tors in West Africa: Long-Term As­sess­ment and the Role of Pro­tected Areas. Ibis, 148: 240-254.

Vi­rani, M., C. Kendall, P. Njoroge, S. Thom­sett. 2011. Major De­clines in the Abun­dance of Vul­tures and Other Scav­eng­ing Rap­tors in and around the Masai Mara Ecosys­tem, Kenya. Bi­o­log­i­cal Con­ser­va­tion, 144: 746-752.

Waite, D., M. Tay­lor. 2015. Ex­plor­ing the avian gut mi­cro­biota: cur­rent trends and fu­ture di­rec­tions. Fron­tiers in Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy, 6: 673.