Documentary: «Genetic Memory of the Egyptian Vulture».

This documentary is intended to be the continuation of an experiment carried out by Dr. Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente many years ago. Félix showed the world how Egyptian Vultures are capable of using pebbles to break open ostrich eggs and eat their contents. After three years of work, the Paleârtica team was able to film the behaviour of the sedentary Egyptian Vultures of Menorca confronted with this situation, after thousands of years without any contact whatsoever with these eggs.

The experiment exceeded expectations and new results of the behaviour of these birds were obtained. Throughout the program´s 50 minutes, we will see how the methodology of the outlined experiment is followed by the Paleârtica team and how, after several attempts to film these extremely intelligent birds, their goal was accomplished. They were also, for the first time, able to get their cameras inside the roosting side of these vultures, one of the largest in Europe, without bothering them whatsoever, achieving video images never before seen. More than 100 individuals were counted in this enormous roosting site.

Introduction:

- The Egyptian Vultures are migratory birds that in the spring of every year travel from Africa to Europe to breed.
-In autumn, the adult birds and their young return to the African continent.
-In Africa, the Egyptian Vultures use pebbles to break open ostrich eggs and eat the inside.

At the end of the 1970s, the famous naturalist, Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, carried out a documented experiment about the behaviour shown by the Egyptian Vulture in the Iberian Peninsula. It involved placing ostrich eggs on the peninsula to find out if the adult vultures would be able to pick up pebbles with their beaks and break the egg as they do in Africa. He also intentionally placed eggs close to the young vultures that had been born on the peninsula that very season to see if they too would break the eggs using a pebble as the adults did, keeping in mind that having only spent time in the short lives in Europe, they still had never seen an ostrich egg.

All this was done to demonstrate whether this behaviour was congenital, that is to say, genetically inherited from their ancestors, or if it was something that was learned by the young vultures by observing the adults and imitating their behaviour. The young Egyptian Vulture that Félix observed picked up a pebble and broke the ostrich egg; hence he was able to prove that it was congenital behaviour. The news spread quickly around the world and would become very important for science.

Objective:

Now, many years later, it has been discovered that the Egyptian Vulture population of Menorca is sedentary, they live on the island year round and neither do they depart at any time, nor do any other Egyptian Vultures arrive. Hence, another genetic doubt was raised; if they are sedentary, they do not migrate to Africa as they did some thousands of years ago! So if we place ostrich eggs in Menorca and the vultures use pebbles to attempt to break them open, we will have definitive proof whether they have genetic memory or if it has been lost, considering that possibly thousands of years have gone by since they last showed this behaviour.

Content of the experiment:

- All methodology of the experiment was filmed.
- We placed ostrich eggs in specific locations to see if the Egyptian Vultures would be able to use pebbles to break open the eggs.
- It is not easy to get these vultures to enter desired areas and approach certain types of food they are not familiar with. For this reason, it took us three years to obtain these images.
- We set ourselves up here in Menorca close to one of the largest roosting sites for Egyptian Vultures in all of Europe, which of course, we also filmed.
- We set up a tent and several camouflaged hideouts months before we began filming.
- We did not enter or exit the tent or the hideouts during hours of daylight and hence, we spent entire days working in the hideouts, so small that we could hardly move.

- On each of the many expeditions we were required to do, we could never spend more than three days and nights in the tent, seeing that between two people, we could not carry the filming equipment and any more than two days supply of food and water due to its weight, not to mention spending so much time hunched over in such tight quarters.
- We had to walk an hour and a half to get to the peak with no path and extremely thick and rigid vegetation most of the way up.
- We suffered from heat, cold, rain, and storms. Due to the problems we had in getting the vultures to come and eat, we made attempts at different times of year.
- But, finally, we achieved the filming of a young Egyptian Vulture that approached an egg and picked up a pebble with which to break it. We were also able to film a young adult and an adult in action.
- The adult was not able to perform these actions of attempting to use rocks to break an egg.
- What we can be absolutely sure of for the time being is that the Egyptian Vultures of the island of Menorca do have «genetic memory».