Turkey Vulture Video Activity: Answer Key

Answer key:

The vulture, with its habit of eating decaying flesh, is not very glamorous, but is very important. The food chain is a cycle; it goes around like a circle and there is no end. At the top of the food chain are the predators. The animals that they find and kill are called their prey. The dead bodies of these animals are called carcasses. Scavengers find and consume this carrion, or dead and rotting flesh. This means that the vulture is not only a scavenger, but also a consumer, and a carnivore, and plays a key role in the ecosystem, cleaning the Earth of organic garbage.

• cycle
• predators
• prey
• carcasses
• scavengers
• consumer
• carnivore
• ecosystem