The Andean condor is one of the largest flying birds on Earth, a vulture whose wings stretch wider than most people are tall. Its claim to fame is weight as much as wingspan, since few birds that heavy can stay in the air at all.
Andean Condor Size at a Glance
- Length, beak to tail: 100 to 130 cm (3 ft 3 in to 4 ft 3 in), about 4 feet on average.1Wikipedia. Andean condor
- Typical wingspan: 2.7 to 3.1 m (8 ft 10 in to 10 ft 2 in).2Wikipedia. Condor
- Largest recorded wingspan: about 3.3 m (10 ft 10 in).3Wikipedia. Andean condor
- Weight of males: 11 to 15 kg (24 to 33 lb).4Wikipedia. Condor
- Weight of females: 7.5 to 11 kg (17 to 24 lb).5Wikipedia. Condor
A 10-foot span is wider than a standard parking space, which is about 8 to 9 feet across. Standing on the ground, a condor reaches roughly a grown adult’s waist, and a 30-pound male weighs about as much as a mid-size dog or a toddler.
Some guides quote a maximum of 10.5 feet and others 10 feet 10 inches, because the largest figures come from exceptional birds.6Animals. Andean Condor A wingspan is also awkward to measure. The wing is flexible, so the result changes with how hard the measurer stretches it, and measurements from museum skins tend to differ from those taken on live birds. That is why two reliable sources can disagree by a few inches.
Length is measured beak to tail, so it leaves out the legs and the bird’s standing height. Weight shifts with how recently the bird ate, so one condor can weigh different amounts from day to day.
How It Compares With Other Giant Birds
The California condor is slightly longer, averaging about 4.5 feet against the Andean’s 4 feet.7Natural Habitat Adventures. A Tale of Two Condors: Andean and California Condors It is lighter, though, at 8 to 14 kg, and has a shorter wingspan of about 9 feet (2.77 m).8Wikipedia. Condor The Andean condor is the bigger bird overall.
The wandering albatross has the widest wings of any living bird, about 3.5 m (11.5 ft) on average.9Animal Matchup. Andean Condor vs Wandering Albatross Yet with a top weight of 33 pounds and wings up to 10 feet 10 inches, the Andean condor is often called the world’s largest flying bird.10Natural Habitat Adventures. A Tale of Two Condors: Andean and California Condors Ostriches are far bigger than either bird but cannot fly.
The wing shapes reflect different lives. The albatross has long, narrow wings suited to steady gliding over open ocean, where wind blows across the waves almost constantly. The condor has broader wings, with fingerlike feathers at the tips, suited to climbing in rising air over mountains and open land. So the albatross wins on wingspan, while the condor carries much more weight on wings of a similar size.
An extinct giant bird, Argentavis, weighed about 70 kg and lived in Argentina around 6 million years ago.11PubMed Central. The aerodynamics of Argentavis, the world’s largest flying bird from the Miocene of Argentina That is more than four times the heaviest Andean condor, which shows how heavy a flying bird can get under the right conditions. It is known only from fossils, so its size is an estimate built from bones, not a measurement of a living bird.
Why Males Are So Much Bigger Than Females
Males weigh about 15 kg on average and females about 11 kg, a gap of about 30%.12PubMed Central. Large-Scale Age-Dependent Skewed Sex Ratio in a Sexually Dimorphic Avian Scavenger Some males weigh up to 50% more than some females.13PubMed. Limited sexual segregation in a dimorphic avian scavenger, the Andean condor The 30% is the typical difference; the 50% compares the extremes. Because the ranges overlap, a large female can outweigh a small male, and weight alone cannot reliably sort one bird by sex. In most birds of prey the female is the larger sex, which makes the condor the exception.14PubMed Central. Large-Scale Age-Dependent Skewed Sex Ratio in a Sexually Dimorphic Avian Scavenger
The gap changes daily life. At a carcass, adult males usually win out over females and younger birds.15PubMed Central. Pigmentation and not only sex and age of individuals affects despotism in the Andean condor Males also start their day almost two hours earlier than females, and within each sex, heavier birds start earlier than lighter ones.16PubMed Central. Sexual-size dimorphism modulates the trade-off between exploiting food and wind resources in a large avian scavenger
In the field, size is hard to judge in flight, so the better clue is the fleshy comb on top of a male’s head. Females lack it. The comb is easiest to see from the side when a bird is perched or close.
How a Bird This Heavy Stays in the Air
Condors flap during only about 1% of their flight time.17PubMed Central. Physical limits of flight performance in the heaviest soaring bird Even on short flights they flap less than 9% of the time.18PubMed Central. Physical limits of flight performance in the heaviest soaring bird Like other condors and vultures, they draw energy for flight from rising air rather than their own muscles.19PubMed Central. The aerodynamics of Argentavis, the world’s largest flying bird from the Miocene of Argentina A condor can spend hours aloft covering long distances in search of carcasses, which would be impractical if it had to flap through most of it.
In practice, condors circle inside columns of warm air called thermals to gain height, and they also ride the wind that rises up mountain slopes. Then they glide long distances between climbs. Before setting off, they wait on perches until the air is right.
Takeoff is the hard part, so condors prefer to launch from cliffs and ridges. When no ledge is near, running and hopping into a headwind helps them up.
The feathers hold a small surprise. The tiny gaps between the hooks that hold a feather together are about the same size on a condor as on a 4-gram hummingbird.20Materials Today. Extreme lightweight structures: avian feathers and bones The feathers themselves, though, grow larger in step with the bird’s size.21PubMed Central. Scaling of bird wings and feathers for efficient flight
What Its Size Means at a Meal
Their size makes Andean condors dominant over every other scavenging bird at a carcass.22The Peregrine Fund. How Big Is an Andean Condor? Size, Wingspan, and Weight Smaller vultures wait at the edges while condors feed. Groups at a single carcass can include a dozen or more birds.23PubMed Central. Exploring the size of Andean condor foraging groups along an altitudinal and latitudinal gradient in the Tropical Andes: Ecological and conservation implications
One condor can eat more than 15 pounds (6.8 kg) of meat in one sitting.24San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. Andean Condor That can add about half again to a female’s body weight, so after such a meal a condor may be too heavy to fly.25San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. Andean Condor Condors may rest beside the carcass until the meal has digested.
The big meal matters because carcasses are unpredictable. A condor that finds one may go a long time before the next. Eating a very large amount at once lets it store food for the lean days between finds, which is why a full crop can leave it visibly bulging and slow.
How Fast a Chick Reaches Full Size
A chick reaches full size in about six months.26National Aviary. Andean Condor Chick Hatches at National Aviary It is not an adult yet, though: behavior and flying skill still have to develop. A young condor has to learn to find food and ride rising air, and its parents keep feeding it while it learns. Parents usually raise only one chick at a time.
Plumage shows the difference. Young condors are brown, while adults are black and white. The adult coloring comes in gradually over several years, so a mottled bird is somewhere in between.
In the related California condor, a female’s eggs get bigger as she matures, peaking around age 10.27aviNews. Unlocking Condor Fertility Clues Larger eggs are more likely to be fertile.28aviNews. Unlocking Condor Fertility Clues