The Bronx Zoo is hand-feeding a baby king vulture to ensure its survival, using a puppet crafted to resemble a real vulture. This technique aims to prevent the chick from imprinting on humans. The chick's parents, typically neglectful, have their behavior supplemented by exposing the chick to an adult vulture in an adjacent enclosure. The zoo developed this method over 40 years ago to successfully rear endangered species, including the California condor. The baby vulture is the first of its kind hatched at the zoo since the 1990s, critical for preserving its lineage.
At this stage of development, our animal care staff are feeding the chick with the Bronx Zoo-made puppet once a day and we are working to ensure it does not imprint on humans.
The zoo says it helped develop the feeding technique more than four decades ago when workers there used it to raise three Andean condor chicks, which were then released into the wild in Peru.
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