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Habitat
Southern and Eastern Europe, Asia except China and Southeast Asia, North Africa
Food
muscles and intestines of carcasses
Lifetime
20 years on average
Weight
6 to 10 pounds
Span
230 to 265 cm
Number of eggs
1 egg per year
Incubation time
45 to 52 days
IUCN Status
safe
EEP?
yes
Cleaners
Griffon vultures play an important role in the wild. They eat meat from dead animals. Usually these are animals that have been killed by predators. They also eat animals that have died of natural causes. By eating carcasses, they help to prevent the spread of diseases. To find their food, vultures fly high in the air. They use rising warm air; thermals. Gliding on thermals doesn’t cost vultures a lot of energy. This way they can stay up in the air for long periods of time and scan the ground for food
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Theme area: A Matter of Taste
You can see the Griffon vultures in the ‘A Matter of Taste' theme area. Here, you can delve into the world of food: how animals find food, hunt, or avoid being eaten.
Losing weight quickly
When a griffon vulture finds a carcass, other griffon vultures soon join it. There have been observations of more than a hundred vultures around one dead animal. A griffon vulture will eat as much as they can, as quickly as they can. Sometimes they eat so much, they become too heavy to fly. In that case, if there is any danger, they will throw up their food so they are able to fly away.
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Release of griffon vultures
In collaboration with Green Balkans and Stichting Wildlife, Eindhoven Zoo is working on the reintroduction of the griffon vulture in Bulgaria. In this country, several European vulture species, namely the griffon vulture, the bearded vulture and the monk vulture, are completely extinct. In recent years, several griffon vultures from our park have been released into the Bulgarian countryside.