A king vulture chick is being hand-raised by a puppet at a New York City zoo.
On February 25, the Bronx Zoo welcomed its first king vulture chick since the 1990s, according to a press release from the Wildlife Conservation Society.
The zoo shared the exciting announcement on Instagram April 29, along with a photo of the chick, whose body is covered in a layer of white down feathers.
To raise the chick, the zoo has been utilizing a clever method, which dates back more than 40 years. According to the facility, zookeepers have been using a hand puppet modeled after an adult king vulture.
Photos that followed depicted the chick being fed via the hand puppet, as well as some behind-the-scenes snaps of the puppet being created and some of the technology behind its functions.
According to the WCS, this technique goes back over four decades, pioneered by ornithologists at the Bronx Zoo. They previously used this method to hand-raise Andean condor chicks in 1980 before they were brought to northwestern Peru and released into the wild in 1981.
This method is used to “prevent young birds from imprinting on humans, and ensures it grows into a healthy adult,” per the zoo’s statement on social media. Additionally, the WCS shared that this method aids in “successful development” because some adult vultures “can be neglectful toward their chicks.”
Artists from the Bronx Zoo’s Exhibition and Graphic Arts Department designed and created the puppet. The zoo shared on social media that a keeper disguises themselves with a costume that conceals their face and human features and uses the puppet to feed the bird inside of a brooder, which acts as a nest.
The WCS shared that this particular chick’s genetics “are valuable to the king vulture zoo population” because its father — who’s 55 — has just one other living descendent.
The sex of the chick is still yet to be determined, as is its name.
“At this stage of development, our animal care staff are feeding the chick with the Bronx Zoo-made puppet once a day and we are working to ensure it does not imprint on humans,” Chuck Cerbini, Curator of Ornithology at the Bronx Zoo, said in the press release.
Cerbini added that the zoo also keeps an adult king vulture in a nearby enclosure so that the chick can “have exposure to appropriate king vulture behavior.”
“That’s another important step we take to ensure the chick grows into a healthy adult bird and is properly socialized as a king vulture,” Cerbini added.
