Why do vultures have bald heads?
Issued: Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:55:00 GMT The reason why vultures are such strange-looking birds can finally be revealed, thanks to a research team from the University. For years, experts have assumed that vultures have bald heads and necks to prevent their feathers from being soiled when they tuck into a meal, usually a newly discovered carcass. That notion has helped fuel the perception of vultures as unsophisticated, blood-thirsty scavengers. However, new research has proved that vultures may also sport the bare-faced look for a very different reason. They look that way to stay cool. ‘The widely held assumption in zoology that vultures have a bare head and neck to prevent soiling of feathers seems plausible,’ says Dominic McCafferty, Environmental and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Glasgow , a member of the team that has unlocked the vulture’s secrets. ‘But other groups of scavengers, particularly giant petrels, have feathered heads. Large mammalian scavengers also don’t have
