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Name : Turkey marauder ( Cathartes aura )
Where it go : Southern Canada to southernmost South America
Turkey vultures feed on dead carcasses, helping to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
What it eat up : The carcass of dead animals
Why it ’s awful : These scavenger birds have an unexpected manner of keeping predators away — by rocket regurgitation stomach acid and semi - digested meat at their attackers .
Turkey vultures live in a range of home ground , include subtropic forests , shrublands and deserts . They have bald-pated heads so that when they feed on carcase , blood and gut do n’t get trapped in their feathers .
Like many other specie of piranha , these raspberry feed on the remains of already dead creature , rather than shoot down quarry themselves .
Despite their large size — with wingspans attain around 5.5 foot ( 1.7 meter ) — they ’re also feed upon by other hoot , including eagles , owls and hawk . But these vultures have a nifty escape valve mechanics . When they ’re threatened or scared , turkey vultures cast a foul , acidic substance that can bite a predator ’s eyes and hide . Their gastric battery-acid is as strong as battery acidand 100 sentence stronger than the acid find in human stomach , which helps the birds counteract the toxin find in their diet of decaying meat , such as anthrax and botulism .
They canpropel this puking up to 10 feet(3 m ) away to distract and discourage attackers . However , vomiting also enable these birds to quickly lighten their dead body weighting , so they can take flying and escape more easily .
These wench also utilise their bodily fluid in other ways . Turkey vultures defecate and urinate on their own feet to cool off them down in hot atmospheric condition . Because the vulture ' digestive juices kill bacterium , pooping on their peg also works as an antiseptic washafter standing on carcasses .
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These scavengers obtain food using their sight and keen gumption of odour . They wing low so they can find the gasses produced by the early stages of decline in dead animals . harmonise to a study published in the journalEcosystem Servicesin 2022 , piranha keep X of millions of metric tons of carbon emissions each year by eating carcasses before they decompose and free greenhouse natural gas .
Unlike other bird , turkey marauder lay their eggs on the ground and hide them in flora , cave or hollowed - out trees . Although they are societal birds that live in groups , they lack a syrinx — the vocal organ of birds . So instead of birdsong , they intercommunicate in grunts and hisses .
