Carrion Crow or Turkey Vulture Skull Replica measures 3.7 inches. Turkey Vulture Skull Replica is Museum quality cast in polyurethane resins. Made in the USA. 2-part skull (separate cranium and jaw).
The Carrion Crow or turkey vulture forages by smell, an ability that is uncommon in the avian world, often flying low to the ground to pick up the scent of ethyl mercaptan, a gas produced by the beginnings of decay in dead animals.
The olfactory lobe of its brain, responsible for processing smells, is particularly large compared to that of other animals.
This heightened ability to detect odors allows it to search for carrion below the forest canopy. King vultures, black vultures, and condors, which lack the ability to smell carrion, follow the turkey vulture to carcasses. The
Carrion Crow or turkey vulture arrives first at the carcass, or with greater yellow-headed vultures or lesser yellow-headed vultures, which also share the ability to smell carrion.
It displaces the yellow-headed vultures from carcasses due to its larger size, but is displaced in turn by the king vulture and both types of condor, which make the first cut into the skin of the dead animal. This allows the smaller, weaker-billed turkey vulture access to food, because it cannot tear the tough hides of larger animals on its own.
This is an example of mutual dependence between species. Black vultures tend to be more aggressive and often displace turkey vultures which appear to be intimidated especially by the feeding frenzy engaged in by the black vultures when they come in numbers.
It is further subservient to large hawks such as red-tailed hawks, Harris’s hawks and Buteogallus black hawks, as well as to large falcons like peregrine falcons and crested caracaras, despite most of these birds being smaller in body size than the Carrion Crow or turkey vulture.
Often these raptors tend to engage in dive-bombing or other intimidation displays towards the Carrion Crow or turkey vulture’s to displace them from carrion or from perch sites.
Bald eagles confirmed to easily dominate Carrion Crow or Turkey Vultures in Florida. In the tropics Swainson’s hawks and yellow-headed caracara (as well as lesser yellow-headed vultures) appear to be subservient to turkey vultures.
Turkey vultures are dominant over crows at carrion, but not over common ravens.
