addendum: vultures & predation

[dam.warren@juno.com (David A McClintock)]

                                                         4/13/98
Greetings,
    This is an additional clarification to my message of yesterday
concerning
vultures and active predation.
    The story of the Greek killed by a lammergeyer, or bearded vulture,
is from
Pliny's NATURAL HISTORY, x, cap. 3 and the victim was Aeschylus the poet.
A philosopher killed by a tortoise dropped by a vulture is funny. But the
death
of a poet is a tragedy.
    According to my rather antiquated source the lammergeyer was
classified
as a relative of the eagles, despite its rather vulturine habits. Don't
now what its current classification status is.
    Re: Jaime Headden's contribution in this a.m.'s packet of e mails.
Good
point on co-operative hunting as an intermediate between sharply
co-ordinated pack hunting and solitary predation.
    In my mention yesterday of black vulture predation is this an
isolated 
habit of scattered groups of birds, i.e., attacking living animals by
cooperating? Can it be spread by learning, i.e., a solitary bird joins a
group and learns the behavoir to take with him/her? Or is it normal, but
rarely observed, behavior of the whole species?
                                                          Dave McC  
    

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