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Living up to its title, Sarcoramphus papa is one of the largest of all true vultures, by far the most extravagantly colored, and dominates over all carrion birds but the even larger Andean Condor. Though it usually lives alone, it will follow flocks of other, smaller vulture species to more easily locate food, and these vultures in turn often depend upon the “king’s” stronger beak to make the first tear in a large, tough carcass. Preferring to eat the skin, cartilage and other tough tissues, it leaves much of the meat and entrails to the lesser subjects. -- http://listverse.com/

The King Vulture eats anything from cattle carcasses to beached fish and dead lizards. In forests, it is likely to eat sloth. Principally a carrion eater, there are isolated reports of it eating injured animals, newborn calves and small lizards.

Although it locates food by vision, the role smell has in how it specifically finds carrion has been debated. Consensus has been that it does not detect odours, and instead follows the smaller Turkey and Greater Yellow-headed Vultures, which do have a sense of smell, to a carcass, but a 1991 study demonstrated that the King Vulture could find carrion in the forest without the aid of other vultures, suggesting that it locates food using an olfactory sense. The King Vulture primarily eats carrion found in the forest, though it is known to venture onto nearby savannas in search of food. Once it has found a carcass, the King Vulture displaces the other vultures because of its large size and strong bill. However, when it is at the same kill as the larger Andean Condor, the King Vulture always defers to it. Using its bill to tear, it makes the initial cut in a fresh carcass. This allows the smaller, weaker-beaked vultures, which can not open the hide of a carcass, access to the carcass after the King Vulture has fed. The vulture’s tongue is rasp-like, which allows it to pull flesh off of the carcass’s bones. Generally, it only eats the skin and harder parts of the tissue of its meal. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/