page_title: New World vulture
section_title: Feeding
hierarchical_section_title: New World vulture / Behavior and ecology / Feeding
context_page_description: The New World vulture or condor family, Cathartidae, contains seven extant species in five genera. It includes five extant vultures and two extant condors found in warm and temperate areas of the Americas. The "New World" vultures were widespread in both the Old World and North America during the Neogene.
  Old World vultures and New World vultures do not form a single clade, but the two groups appear similar because of convergent evolution.
  Vultures are scavenging birds, feeding mostly from carcasses of dead animals without apparent ill effects. Bacteria in the food source, pathogenic to other vertebrates, dominate the vulture's gut flora, and vultures benefit from the bacterial breakdown of carrion tissue. Some species of New World vulture have a good sense of smell, whereas Old World vultures find carcasses exclusively by sight. A particular characteristic of many vultures is a bald head, devoid of feathers.
context_section_description: All living species of New World vultures and condors are scavengers.  Their diet is overwhelmingly composed of carrion, and they are commonly seen in carcasses.  Other additions to the diet include fruit (especially rotten fruit) and garbage. An unusual characteristic of the species in genus Cathartes is a highly developed sense of smell, which they use to find carrion. They locate carrion by detecting the scent of ethyl mercaptan, a gas produced by the bodies of decaying animals. The olfactory lobe of the brains in these species, which is responsible for processing smells, is particularly large compared to that of other animals. Other species, such as the American black vulture and the king vulture, have weak senses of smell and find food only by sight, sometimes by following Cathartes vultures and other scavengers.
caption: American black vultures on a horse carcass
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