Andean condors are mainly scavengers, but they have been seen taking some live prey such as marmots, birds and rabbits. An Andean condor's beak is hooked at the end and tears meat from a carcass. Compared with other birds of prey, a condor's feet are much less powerful, with shorter, blunter talons, which suit walking and scavenging. A condor does not have feathers on its head, which helps keep it clean while it eats.

Condors mostly eat the dead bodies of large animals, such as deer, cows and sheep. An Andean condor can eat more than 15 pounds (6.8 kilograms) of meat at one meal, and it may be unable to fly after such a large meal.

Condors that eat dead animals help reduce diseases such as anthrax and botulism.

A condor uses its sharp eyesight to find food from high in the sky. Andean condors may follow smaller vultures, which find food by smell, while condors find it by sight.

Condors use the rising warm air that spirals up off cliff faces to soar for hours. They can soar as high as about 5,500 meters (18,000 feet) above sea level. Scientists who put recorders on wild condors found that the birds flap their wings only about 1 percent of the time they are in the air. In one study, a condor flew for about 5 hours and more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) without flapping its wings once.

Among birds of prey, the Andean condor has the longest wingspan. Its wings stretch up to about 3.2 meters (10.5 feet) from tip to tip.

Andean condors are thought to mate for life. They do not build nests, and the female lays one egg. An Andean condor egg weighs about 280 grams and is 7.6 to 10.1 centimeters long. The parents keep it warm for about two months before the chick hatches, and both parents care for the chick for a year or more. A pair usually raises just one chick every other year. A wild Andean condor can live about 50 years.

Males are larger and have a comb on top of the head. Male Andean condors have yellow eyes, and females have red eyes. Young condors change feathers slowly and need about eight years before they get their parents' black and white.

Outside the nesting season, Andean condors often gather in groups to rest and sleep on rocky cliffs. In Patagonia, as many as 196 Andean condors have been counted together at a communal roost.

Words to know

• scavengers: eaters of carrion
• talons: bird claws
• carcass: dead animal body
• roost: resting place
• wingspan: wing size