A Turkey Vulture(Cathartes aura) and Barn Owl(Tyto alba) presentation by Animal Ambassadors at a Little Ray’s Reptile Zoo show. You can learn more about Little Ray’s Reptile Zoo by visiting their website at:
Little Ray’s Reptile Zoo:
For more information about birds of prey click to this page:
https://brantamedia.com/2019/10/12/what-are-birds-of-prey
For more information about vultures click to this page:
https://brantamedia.com/2021/03/01/all-about-vultures
For more information about owls click to this page:
https://brantamedia.com/2019/10/22/typical-owls-and-barn-owls
Video Transcript:
Vulture, this is the giant Turkey Vulture, that is absolutely right. Now guys this is a bird of prey remember, birds of prey are vultures, eagles, hawks, falcons, and owls. Birds of prey hunt, except for this one. this one does not hunt. What does a vulture do instead of hunt? what about you? Before you explode. Exactly, if it sees a dead animal it takes advantage of it and eats it. It is a scavenger.
It eats dead animals, rotting animals, old meat, old carcasses, and these guys are very very well adapted to eating that kind of food. I just want to give you three examples of very special things about this animal, that are very specifically adapted to eating old rotten disgusting maggot filled flesh. First of all guys she is missing feathers somewhere, where is she missing feathers? On her face, the reason that vultures don’t have these feathers on their face is because they stick their face deep into rotting meat; she doesn’t want to get any rotting disgusting meat stuck to the feathers on her face. So to help keep her face clean she doesn’t grow feathers on her face. Second guys if you look closely you can see right through her face, there is a big hole in her face.
You want to groom me alright that is very cute. So if you look close you might not be able to see right now, but after the presentation you can look right through her face. She has a big hole in her face, that’s her nose. That is designed so she can stick her talon right through her nose, so to be able pick her nose, because when she sticks her head into a dead carcass she often gets rotten flesh stuck in her nose. So she needs a hole big enough so she can pick her nose, so she’s literally evolved to be good at nose picking. Also when she is mucking around with her feet in lots of dead flesh, dead flesh is not good to handle, it is harboring bacteria, viruses, everything else, she needs to disinfect her feet everytime she goes to eat. There is a very cool way that she cleans her feet, does anyone know how she cleans her feet? Guys, if you look, her feet are a little bit dirty that’s not by accident, she steps in her food all the time. So how does she clean her feet? Any ideas? What do you think? Water? it’s more fun than water, she pees on her feet. Her urine is designed as a disinfectant, it is like washing your hands, or using sanitizer.
It is very good for cleaning the bacteria on your feet, after she’s been mucking around on a field with lots of dead animals in it scavenging for meat.
Alright guys, what do I have here? A Barn Owl. Now there’s two things I want to go over about the Barn Owl, and then you can come up and meet the animals I promise, This is my last spiel you have to listen to. First of all guys,
Barn Owls, are they found in Canada? Yes they are. Do you think they’re doing well here in Canada? No. So in Ontario, at one point these guys were down to two breeding pairs in the entire province. They were litteraly hanging on by a thread, um, lots of the zoos, including the Moncton Zoo, Toronto Zoo, our zoo, got together and started breeding them. So every year we breed these guys, this guy was one born in triplets born one year, and we’re starting to release them now in the wild, so the population is now going up a little bit, but in some parts of Canada it was hanging on by a thread, so its not doing well everywhere.
