OSSIFRAGE

Bone-breaker; in Hebrew Peries, to break; an unclean bird of the eagle family, Le 11:13 De 14:12. Some interpreters think the vulture is intended; others, a mountain bird like the lammergeyer of the Alps, which breaks the bones of wild goats by hunting them over precipices.

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Ossifrage. Ossifrage
Heb. peres = to “break” or “crush”, the lammer-geier, or bearded vulture, the largest of the whole vulture tribe. It was an unclean bird (Lev. 11:13; Deut. 14:12). It is not a gregarious bird, and is found but rarely in Palestine. “When the other vultures have picked the flesh off any animal, he comes in at the end of the feast, and swallows the bones, or breaks them, and swallows the pieces if he cannot otherwise extract the marrow. The bones he cracks [hence the appropriateness of the name ossifrage, i.e., “bone-breaker”] by letting them fall on a rock from a great height. He does not, however, confine himself to these delicacies, but whenever he has an opportunity will devour lambs, kids, or hares. These he generally obtains by pushing them over cliffs, when he has watched his opportunity; and he has been known to attack men while climbing rocks, and dash them against the bottom. But tortoises and serpents are his ordinary food...No doubt it was a lammer-geier that mistook the bald head of the poet AEschylus for a stone, and dropped on it the tortoise which killed him” (Tristram’s Nat. Hist.).

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OSSIFRAGE. → (A carnivorous bird) → Forbidden as food Le 11:13; De 14:12

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ossifrage. Ossifrage, n. a strong fierce kind of eagle

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Os″si‐frage (?), n. [[L. ossifraga, ossifragus, osprey, fr. ossifragus bone breaking; os, ossis, a bone + frangere, fractum, to break. See Osseous, Break, and cf. Osprey, Ossifragous.]] (Zoöl.) (a) The lammergeir. (b) The young of the sea eagle or bald eagle.