Date of Submission

Spring 2024

Academic Program

Film and Electronic Arts; Biology

Project Advisor 1

Ben Coonley

Project Advisor 2

Bruce Robertson

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Over the past several decades, black vultures (Coragyps atratus) have expanded their range from the Southeastern United States to the Northeast. Human-vulture conflict has taken place in their expanded range. There have been reports of predation on livestock, aircraft collisions, and general damage to infrastructure, all of which have monetary consequences and sometimes can endanger human (and vulture) lives. To mitigate and prevent this conflict a better understanding of vulture (and human) behavior is necessary. Through research, I first found that vultures will eat cheese and tofu in addition to meat. I then found evidence supported by previous research for vultures' use of olfaction and local enhancement in foraging. Vultures visited boxes with the scent of meat instead of boxes with no scent 93% of the time, and had increased odds of visiting boxes with rotten meat as the number of vultures surrounding the box they arrived at increased. Finally, bringing together this new research, research from the literature, and my experience through movie making of getting to know people who deal with vulture damages, I speculate as to ways in which coexistence with vultures can be facilitated through potential feeding practices.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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