Why a New York zoo is feeding a baby vulture with a hand puppet

NEW YORK — A baby vulture at a New York zoo is being fed not by another bird but by hand puppet — a decades-old technique used to ensure the chick doesn’t identify too closely with its human handlers.

King vultures can neglect their chicks, so hand-feeding is necessary to ensure the baby survives, the Bronx Zoo said in a statement Tuesday. But to make sure it doesn't imprint on humans, staff train the bird's instincts onto a hand puppet that's crafted to look like a real vulture.

“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," Bronx Zoo Curator of Ornithology Chuck Cerbini said in a statement.

Footage of a feeding session shows someone with their arm clad in black and a puppet that looks like a vulture’s face and beak on their hand, which is used to grab morsels of food and deliver them to the chick’s mouth.

An adult king vulture is placed in an adjacent enclosure that “allows the chick to have exposure to appropriate king vulture behavior," Cerbini said.

The zoo says it helped develop the feeding technique more than four decades ago when workers there used it to raise three Andean condor chicks, which were then released into the wild in Peru. Hand-puppet rearing has also been used to help bring back the critically endangered California condor.

The new king vulture chick, which is yet to be named, is the first of its kind to be hatched at the Bronx Zoo since the 1990s. The zoo said it wants to make sure the genetics of the chick's 55-year-old father are carried on, as it has only one other living offspring.