Andean condor
The Andean condor, Vultur gryphus, can stretch its wings 3.3 metres from tip to tip and weigh as much as 15 kilograms. It ranges across the Andes mountains and the adjacent Pacific coasts of western South America. It is generally considered the largest bird of prey in the world, yet it makes its living mostly from animals that are already dead.
Several questions run through this documentary. How does an animal this heavy cross mountain ranges while barely flapping? What does its bare red head tell other birds when the colour floods in? Why did American biologists once release South American condors into California? And why does a bird that can outlive almost every other bird now need people to rescue it?
A typical Andean condor measures between 100 and 130 centimetres in length. Weight is where it truly stands out. The species averages 11.3 kilograms, with males near 12.5 and females near 10.1. That is the heaviest average weight of any living flying bird, ahead of trumpeter swans and Dalmatian pelicans. Some sources give a lower mean of 10.3 kilograms, so the figure depends on who is weighing. Male bustards of the largest species can weigh more, so the title of largest flying land bird rests on average weight and wingspan together.
The average wingspan is around 283 centimetres, and the wings have the greatest surface area of any living bird. Only the great albatrosses and the two largest pelican species beat it for wingspan, on average and at the maximum.
Black covers the adult body, broken by a frill of white feathers at the base of the neck. Males, especially, carry broad white bands on the wings, and these appear only after the first moult. Juveniles look quite different, with grayish-brown plumage, a blackish head and neck, and a brown ruff.
Skin that runs from red to blackish-red covers a head and neck with very few feathers, and the bird keeps them meticulously clean. That baldness leaves the skin open to dehydration and high-altitude ultraviolet light, which sterilize it. Males wear a dark red comb, called a caruncle, on a flattened crown, plus a wattle of hanging neck skin. Male irises are brown, female irises are deep red, and neither sex has eyelashes.
The middle toe is greatly elongated, while the hind toe is only slightly developed. The talons are fairly straight and blunt, so the feet suit walking better than gripping and make poor weapons. The beak is hooked and built to tear rotting meat. The female is smaller than the male, which reverses the usual pattern among birds of prey.
Researchers tell individual condors apart by the colour patterns on the wings and the size and shape of the male's crest.
In the early 19th century, the Andean condor bred along the entire chain of the Andes, from western Venezuela to Tierra del Fuego. Human activity has since cut that range significantly.
Today the range begins in Venezuela and Colombia, where the bird is extremely rare. It then continues south through Ecuador, Peru and Chile, through Bolivia and western Argentina, and on to Tierra del Fuego. The Santa Marta Mountains hold condors too.
Open grasslands and alpine areas up to 5000 metres make up most of its habitat. The bird favours open, non-forested ground such as the páramo or rocky mountain terrain, where it can spot carrion from the air. It occasionally ranges into lowlands in eastern Bolivia, northern Peru and southwestern Brazil. It also descends to lowland desert in Chile and Peru, and it flies over southern-beech forests in Patagonia.
Meadows matter in southern Patagonia, because they are likely to hold herbivores. Condor distribution there follows the meadows, along with the cliffs used for nesting and roosting.
Carl Linnaeus described the species in 1758, in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae, and it still carries the name Vultur gryphus that he gave it. Where it belongs on the family tree remains unsettled. It and the other six New World vulture species resemble Old World vultures and fill similar ecological roles. They are not closely related, having evolved from different ancestors in different parts of the world. Some earlier authorities suggested a link to storks. More recent ones keep New World vultures in the order Accipitriformes with the Old World vultures, or give them their own order, Cathartiformes. The South American Classification Committee lists them as incertae sedis, meaning their placement is uncertain.
The Andean condor is the only accepted living species of its genus, Vultur, and its fossil record is scant. The California condor, by contrast, is known from extensive fossil remains. Presumed Plio-Pleistocene species of South American condors were later judged to be the same as the living bird. One exception is a handful of small bones from a Pliocene deposit in Tarija Department, Bolivia, which may belong to a smaller subspecies called V. gryphus patruus.
In The Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin described watching condors for half an hour without once seeing a wing flap. The bird soars with its wings held horizontally and the primary feathers bent upward at the tips.
Its body explains the habit. The condor lacks a large sternum, the breastbone that would anchor big flight muscles, which marks it physiologically as a soarer. It does flap when rising from the ground. After reaching a moderate height, though, it flaps very rarely and relies on thermals, which are rising currents of warm air, to stay aloft.
Flight recorders put numbers on this. They showed that "75% of the birds' flapping was associated with take-off", and that the condor "flaps its wings just 1% of the time during flight". Short flights involve proportionally more flapping. Flapping between two thermal glides is greater than flapping between two slope glides.
High perches suit this style, since the bird can launch from them without major wing effort. Andean condors are often seen soaring near rock cliffs, using the heat rising there to climb.
Like other New World vultures, the condor often empties its cloaca onto its legs and feet, a habit called urohidrosis. Cooling by evaporation has been proposed as the reason, but that makes little sense in the cold Andean habitat. The habit leaves the legs streaked with a white buildup of uric acid.
Wild condors often travel more than 200 kilometres a day in search of carrion. They prefer large carcasses, and naturally they take the largest available, such as llamas, alpacas, rheas, guanacos, deer and armadillos.
Cattle, horses, donkeys, mules, sheep, domestic pigs, domestic goats and dogs now feed most inland condors, because domestic animals have become so widespread in South America. Carcasses of introduced game also count, including wild boar, rabbits, foxes and red deer. Coastal condors eat mostly beached marine mammals, largely cetaceans. In particularly plentiful areas, some limit their foraging to a few kilometres of beach-front land. They also raid the nests of smaller birds for eggs. Occasionally they hunt small live prey such as rodents, birds and rabbits, which they kill by jabbing repeatedly with the bill.
Smaller vultures of the genus Cathartes, including the turkey vulture, find food by smell. They detect ethyl mercaptan, a gas produced by the first stages of decay. Those vultures cannot tear through the tough hides of large animals as efficiently as a condor can, so the two species often depend on each other. Studies indicate, though, that condors are fairly good at finding carrion unaided. Black vultures and mammalian scavengers such as foxes may compete with condors, but the condor is invariably dominant among scavengers in its range.
A study in Patagonia found condors shaping the ecology of the puma. The birds routinely took over the cat's kills, often the day after a nighttime hunt. Apparently the pumas responded by killing more often to make up for their frequent losses.
Condors eat in bursts. They may go a few days without a meal, then gorge on several pounds at once, sometimes to the point of being unable to lift off. Because their feet cannot grasp, they must feed on the ground. By clearing away carrion, they also remove what would otherwise be a breeding ground for disease.
Pigments from plant matter in the viscera of carcasses add colour. The condor absorbs carotenoids such as β-carotene and echineone efficiently. They produce the yellow skin of adult males and the brilliant yellow flush that spreads across it within seconds during contests for dominance. They also colour the iris and the bright orange tongue of both sexes. Captive condors, fed mostly flesh, carry lower concentrations of these pigments than wild ones.
An analysis of wild condor droppings found plant remains in 90% of them. Among those, 35% were made up primarily of plant matter, around 80% by volume.
Breeding behavior does not appear until an Andean condor is five or six years old, and then it mates for life. During courtship, the male's neck skin flushes from dull red to bright yellow and inflates. He approaches the female with neck outstretched, hissing, then spreads his wings and stands erect while clicking his tongue. Other rituals include hissing and clucking while hopping with the wings partly spread, and dancing.
At elevations of 3000-5000 metres, a few sticks laid around the eggs make the nest, usually on an inaccessible rock ledge. In coastal Peru, where cliffs are scarce, some nests are shaded crannies scraped out against boulders on slopes. The female lays one bluish-white egg, weighing about 280 grams and measuring 75-100 millimetres long. Breeding happens about every second year. In the southern Andes it falls around October, while in the central and northern Andes it can happen at any time of year.
Both parents incubate the egg, which hatches after 54-58 days. If the egg or chick is lost or removed, the pair lays another. Researchers and breeders exploit this by taking the first egg for hand-rearing, which prompts a second egg that the parents generally raise themselves. That roughly doubles the reproductive rate.
Chicks wear grayish down until they are almost as large as their parents. They can fly after six months, but they keep roosting and hunting with their parents until age two. A new clutch then displaces them.
Large groups of condors have a well-developed social structure. Birds compete for a pecking order using body language, play and vocalizations. Mature males tend to sit at the top, and immature males that have left their parents tend to sit near the bottom.
Kuzya, a male condor, died after 72 years in captivity. In 1983 the Guinness Book of World Records considered him the longest-lived bird of any species with a confirmed lifespan. He had been captured from the wild as a juvenile of undetermined age. Slow maturing and no known natural predators in adulthood help explain such lives. Wild lifespans have not been studied extensively, but some estimates exceed 50 years.
Parrots have been reported to live perhaps beyond 100 years in captivity, though at the time those claims were not considered authenticated. Another early captive condor reportedly lived 71 years.
Then came Thaao, a male kept at Beardsley Zoo in Connecticut. He was born in captivity in 1930 and died on the 26th of January 2010, aged 79. That is the greatest verified age ever recorded for a bird.
The word condor comes from the Quechua kuntur. The genus name Vultur is the Latin word for vulture, and the species name gryphus comes from a variant of the Greek grupós, meaning hook-nosed. The bird is also sometimes named after a country, as in Chilean condor or Peruvian condor.
Andean artists have been representing the condor since about 2500 BCE, and it is part of indigenous Andean religions. In Andean mythology it was associated with the sun deity and thought to rule the upper world. Many Andean cultures treat it as a symbol of power and health. Some believed its bones and organs had medicinal powers, which sometimes led people to hunt and kill condors for them.
Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and the Venezuelan Andes states all treat the condor as a national symbol. It is the national bird of Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador.
In some versions of Peruvian bullfighting, called Yawar Fiesta or Blood Festival, a condor is tied to the back of a bull, where it pecks at the animal as bullfighters fight it. The condor generally survives and is set free.
Stamps have carried its image in many countries: Ecuador in 1958, Argentina in 1960, Peru in 1973, Bolivia in 1985, Colombia in 1992, Chile in 1935 and 2001, and Venezuela in 2004. It has also appeared on the coins and banknotes of Colombia and Chile.
The Brazilian composer Carlos Gomes wrote an opera called Condor, which premiered in 1863 at Teatro alla Scala in Milan. In 1913, the Peruvian songwriter Daniel Alomía Robles composed the zarzuela El Cóndor Pasa. The song was first performed publicly at the Teatro Mazzi in Lima.
In 2020, research on the species' plight moved its IUCN status from Near Threatened to Vulnerable. Only about 10,000 individuals remain. The United States first placed it on its Endangered Species list in 1970.
Threats include the loss of habitat needed for foraging, secondary poisoning from lead in carcasses of animals killed by hunters, and persecution. The north of its range is hit hardest, and the bird is extremely rare in Venezuela and Colombia, where it has declined considerably in recent years. The condor is adapted to very low mortality and has correspondingly low reproductive rates, so human persecution hits it hard. Much of that persecution comes from farmers who see it as a threat because of alleged attacks on livestock. Conservationists run education programs to dispel that misconception.
Reintroduction programs release captive-bred condors, hatched in North American zoos, to bolster wild populations in Argentina, Venezuela and Colombia. The first captive-bred Andean condors went into the wild in 1989. Human contact is kept to a minimum during rearing. Keepers feed chicks with glove puppets that resemble adult condors, so the chicks do not imprint on humans and lose their wariness. Before release, the birds spend three months in aviaries that resemble their release environment. Afterward they are tracked by satellite, which shows where they travel and whether they are alive.
In 1988, after every wild California condor had been captured, the US Fish and Wildlife Service began an experiment with Andean condors in California. It released captive Andean condors into the wild there, and only females, to stop the species from becoming invasive. The experiment succeeded. All the Andean condors were recaptured and re-released in South America before any California condors were reintroduced.
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Common questions
How big is the Andean condor?
The Andean condor has a maximum wingspan of 3.3 metres and a maximum weight of 15 kilograms. Its average weight of 11.3 kilograms is the heaviest of any living flying bird, and its wings have the largest surface area of any living bird.
Where does the Andean condor live?
The Andean condor lives in the Andes mountains and along the adjacent Pacific coasts of western South America. Its range runs from Venezuela and Colombia, where it is extremely rare, south to Tierra del Fuego.
What does the Andean condor eat?
The Andean condor feeds mainly on carrion and prefers large carcasses such as llamas, alpacas, guanacos, deer and cattle. Coastal condors eat mostly beached marine mammals, and condors occasionally kill small live animals by jabbing with the bill.
How long does an Andean condor live?
Andean condors are among the longest-lived birds, and some wild estimates exceed 50 years. Kuzya lived 72 years in captivity. Thaao, kept at Beardsley Zoo in Connecticut, died on the 26th of January 2010 at 79, the greatest verified age ever recorded for a bird.
Is the Andean condor endangered?
The Andean condor is listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN, a status changed from Near Threatened in 2020, and only about 10,000 individuals remain. Threats include habitat loss, secondary lead poisoning from carcasses killed by hunters, and persecution by farmers.
Why is the Andean condor important in Andean culture?
The Andean condor has appeared in Andean art since about 2500 BCE and was associated with the sun deity as ruler of the upper world. It is the national bird of Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador.
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