Vultures are well-known scavengers. They’re the trash collectors of the animal world – consuming dead carcasses that nothing else will touch.
Vultures are not exclusively carrion eaters, however. Occasionally, they will attack an animal.
“We know that these predation events [by black vultures] are without a doubt a real thing that’s happening,” said Marian Wahl, a doctoral candidate at Purdue University who’s studying how and when black vultures kill livestock.