Rüppell's Vulture bird or Rüppell's Griffon Vulture is a species of vulture big body who live in the Sahel region, Central Africa. Rare bird that has the Latin name Gyps rueppellii is also known by the name of Rüppell's Griffon, Rueppell's Griffon, Rüppell's Griffin Vulture, Rueppell's Vulture and still there is more.

The name "Rüppell" itself was given to these birds as a form of respect for Eduard Rüppell, an adventurer of the 19th century coming from Germany who was also a collector and zoologist.

Rüppell's Vulture bird known as the bird that could fly the highest in the world. According to the data, a vulture is capable of flying up to penetrate an altitude of 11,000 m above sea level.

Adult birds have a body length of about 85 to 103 cm with a wingspan of approximately 2.26 to 2.6 m, and the weight of 6.4 to 9 kg. Males and females have a similar appearance that has leopard-spotted brown or black all over his fur with a pale brown abdomen. While the head and neck dirty white.

These birds are very social birds. Their usual perches, nesting, and eat together in a large herd. This type of bird can fly up to a speed of 35 km / h and usually they fly up to 150 km from their nest to find food.

Rüppell's Vulture has a special hemoglobin in their blood hemoglobin alphaD, allowing them to utilize oxygen efficiently though they were flying in a high pressure in the troposphere layer of earth. Because the range of flying very high, once there is a case where this bird ingested into a jet engine that was flying over Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire on 29 November1973.

Rüppell's Vulture bird habitat is in dry areas and mountains in Africa, such as in the area of ​​semi-desert or desert suburb. They have very sharp eyesight to find the carcass of a large animal or an animal of prey in action. They will wait until a few days until the carnivorous left the rest of the prey. Actually, this bird also sometimes catch their own prey, but it is very rare.

You could say this bird is quite voracious in food. They will eat meat, offal, skin, even his bones until they are almost not strong fly again because of a glut. However, despite their relatively large body, they are not the dominant predators, because there is still a vulture greater than them in their habitat.

It is estimated that the bird population Rüppell's Vulture is now no more than 30,000 individuals in the wild. In addition, their population was declining every year. One of the main causes is the reduction in habitat.