A king vulture chick is being nursed by employees of the Bronx Zoo, though it will hopefully never know it. The chick, at risk of identifying with its human handlers, is being fed by a black-gloved human hand topped with a puppet handmade by zoo artists to resemble an adult king vulture, WNYW reports. "At this stage of development, our animal care staff are feeding the chick with the Bronx Zoo-made puppet once a day," Curator of Ornithology Chuck Cerbini says in a statement, per the AP. "We are working to ensure it does not imprint on humans."
When worn by a handler, whose face and other human features are concealed, the vulture puppet appears to grab pieces of food in its beak and deliver them to the chick's mouth. Outside of feeding time, the chick is exposed to a real adult king vulture in an adjacent enclosure so it can grasp "appropriate king vulture behavior," Cerbini says. The zoo has lots of experience with this kind of thing. It helped develop the puppet feeding technique when it took in three Andean condor chicks more than 40 years ago. They were later released in Peru, per the AP. The technique has also been used to raise and release the critically endangered California condors.
The king vulture chick, hatched Feb. 25, is the first of its kind at the Bronx Zoo since the 1990s, per KSNV. Its gender has not been established and it has yet to receive a name. The zoo hopes to carry on the genetics of the chick's 55-year-old father, who has only one surviving offspring. Employees say using the puppet improves the chance of successful development as king vultures can be neglectful toward their chicks. "It is a good example of the extent we go to ensure the health of individual animals and of species' populations," Cerbini says. (More Bronx Zoo stories.)
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