Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 February 1875 — Vultures. [ARTICLE]

Vultures.

An interesting discussion has been conducted in the columns of the London Times upon the nature of the instinct which informs Vultures of the presence of objects of prey. Strong evidence has been brought by three several correspondents against the doctrine that the sense which guides the vulture is that of smell. Vultures are attracted even before The death of the creature which is to become their prey. They are also attracted in the desert, where the heat is so dry that there is no smell, and before decay has begun in the dying or dead animal to which they are drawn?" The herdsmen of the Andes breed their cattle from black rather than light colored stock, that they may not be detected by the condors that scour the heavens in search of prey. The nasal organ of the vulture is far less finely organized than his eye, which probably is as far sighted as a human eye armed with a telescope, while it commands, when the bird is aloft, a far wider field. The weight of testimony brought forward in the controversy also shows that the vulture has a faculty for measuring the angle with the horizon at which another vulture is flying—since the flight of a great number is found to converge accurately, without the least deviation, on a single point, though many of them fly from a height too small to admit of their being guided by their own vision. Their course in such cases seems, in all probability, to be directed simply by observation of the angle and line of flight of their more elevated comrades.