Biomedical Ephemera, or: A Frog for Your Boils

“Der Bartige Alpengyerdaler” - Gypaetus barbatus - The Bearded Vulture-Eagle or Lammergeier

The lammergeier is the most distantly-related of all the vultures, and that’s evident in its appearance. Though structurally similar to a mostly-extinct branch of Old World Vultures (only the Egyptian Vulture still remains), it is the only vulture without a bald head, and the only vulture that refuses to eat carrion. Well, refuses to eat carrion meat, at least. The lammergeier will actually remove bones from rotting meat, and repeatedly drop them onto rocks, so that it can eat the bone marrow. Though a somewhat inefficient way of acquiring its food (oftentimes bones that aren’t dessicated take several drops from high altitudes), this strategy is highly effective for surviving in craggy and often desolate high-altitude environments where meat isn’t often available. Long-abandoned skeletons of dead animals that have been picked clean of anything but bones can provide days of food for the lammergeier.

Teutsche Ornithologie oder Naturgeschichte aller Vögel Teutschlands in naturgetreuen Abbildungen und Beschreibungen. Johann Conrad and Johann Theodor Susemihl, 1802.