Vultures have bald heads to…

…regulate temperature and (maybe) to keep feathers clean while eating. Keeping the feathers clean was my inspiration for this sketchplanation - there’s something about the cold practicality of not messing up your feathers while you’re tucking into some carrion. However, it looks like it is more likely to be for the more prosaic reason of regulating temperature and keeping cool. As Dominic McCafferty, at the University of Glasgow points out:

‘…other groups of scavengers, particularly giant petrels, have feathered heads. Large mammalian scavengers also don’t have bald heads, so why vultures?’

Should you be interested, read more at the University of Glasgow’s Why do vultures have bald heads?