Gyps
Genus of birds
Gyps is a genus of Old World vultures that was proposed by Marie Jules César Savigny in 1809. Its members are sometimes known as griffon vultures. Gyps vultures have a slim head, a long slender neck with downy feathers, and a ruff around the neck formed by long buoyant feathers. The crown of their big beaks is a little compressed, and their big dark nostrils are set transverse to the beak. They have six or seven wing feathers, of which the first is the shortest and the fourth the longest.
01Taxonomy
The genus Gyps was introduced in 1809 by the French zoologist Marie Jules César Savigny to accommodate the Eurasian griffon vulture. The genus name is from Ancient Greek gups meaning "vulture". The genus contains eight extant species.
| Image | Name | Distribution and IUCN Red List status |
|---|---|---|
| Eurasian griffon vulture G. fulvus (Hablitz, 1783) | LC | |
| White-rumped vulture G. bengalensis (Gmelin, 1788) | India and Nepal, Pakistan CR | |
| Cape vulture G. coprotheres (Forster, 1798) | Southern Africa | |
| Indian vulture G. indicus (Scopoli, 1786) | Pakistan, India and Nepal CR | |
| Slender-billed vulture G. tenuirostris Gray, 1844 | India CR | |
| Rüppell's vulture G. rueppelli (Brehm, 1852) | Sahel and East Africa CR | |
| White-backed vulture G. africanus Salvadori, 1865 | West and center, East, Southern Africa CR | |
| Himalayan vulture G. himalayensis Hume, 1869 | NT |
Two fossil species have been described:
- † Maltese vulture G. melitensis Lydekker, 1890, Fossil remains were found in Middle to Late Pleistocene sites all over the central and eastern Mediterranean.
- † G. bochenskii Boev, 2010, Fossil remains were found near Varshets in northwestern Bulgaria that were dated to the Late Pliocene.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Gyps”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Griffon.JPG by Naumann, Public domain
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