The ecology of obligate scavengers from individual behaviour to population dynamics

Abstract

Studies on vultures are on the rise, and just as well given the sharp declines in many of the 23 species. Indeed it seems these population crashes are responsible for this research boost. However, there remain obvious gaps in our knowledge when it comes to the world's only terrestrial example of vertebrate obligate scavengers. It has been suggested that a human aversion to carrion is one of the reasons scavengers are reviled by the public and understudied by science. Broadly, the following body of work is an attempt to fill in some of these gaps.