The natural diet of these birds is bones. Not just bone marrow — actual bone shards. They pick up huge bones from carcasses and drop them onto rocks until they get spiky pieces and then they swallow them. Their stomach acid dissolves bone. When sufficiently threatened, they’ve been observed to deliberately puke on the threat.
They aren’t naturally red like that. That’s self-applied makeup. They find the reddest earth they can to work into their feathers as a status symbol.
They don’t scavenge other parts of carcases, just the bones. 85-90% of their diet is exclusively bone. Hence why it’s only a myth that these birds would just pick up whole lambs and carry them off. It’s not true, but in German they’re still called Lämmergeier as a result.
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