How do Turkey Vultures find their food?
They have very keen senses of sight, smell and hearing. They find food by sight and also by an extremely acute sense of smell which is capable of detecting parts per trillion and discerning from which direction they came. Turkey vultures have a highly developed sense of smell, something most birds don’t have, including other vulture species. They often depend on the odors given off by decaying flesh for locating food. Interesting studies and observations have been made regarding the turkey vulture’s sense of smell, in fact, a debate on this topic lasted over a century. Even today, there is still some argument on the subject. Some researchers thought turkey vultures relied on vision (which they do, to some extent) and/or hearing. Two separate studies, however, seem to indicate that smell is the preferred mechanism for finding food. Other interesting evidence of the turkey vulture’s ability to smell comes to us, of all places, from the natural gas industry. A retired engineer for Union O
