Stuff You Should Know - Why should you never scare a vulture?

Episode Date: July 23, 2013

Being ravenous eaters of decaying flesh, vultures have long been shunned by humans. But because of their disgusting habits, vultures provide a much-needed service to the rest of the organisms on Earth, making them the unsung heroes of their ecosystems. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Follow Operation Trade Bomb on Apple Podcasts. Getting into a vehicle can open a world of possibilities. You start the engine and you immediately think, where to next. And Toyota is all about that where to next spirit. Because they believe life's bigger when you get out and discover more of it. Like I remember this one road trip I took down the coastal highway in California from San Francisco to San Diego. That was incredible, something that I really want to do again.

And listen, even the shortest trip may turn into an unforgettable journey of a lifetime. So go on, find out where to next with Toyota. Let's go places. Start your journey at toyota.com slash let's go places. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

We both look like we're in some sort of fight club because our hair is equally short these days. Yeah, I got the summer buzz cut. Let's see your fingernails. Do you keep them trimmed? Uh, well, I chew the nails, you know. Yeah, I got mine trimmed too. Okay.

Is that one of the rules of fight club? Yeah. I didn't know that. Wasn't it scratching? It wasn't a rule. It was, uh, it was one of the reasons to keep your fingernails trimmed and your hair cut. Yeah. You know what I'm going to bring back?

I saw gangs of New York the other day again. The fish hook. Oh, yeah. When the guy fish hooks the dude, that's a classic move in like old school fighting. Yeah. Like you put your fisticuffs up and then if you get a hold of a guy, you give him the fish hook. You're bringing that back, huh?

I'm bringing back the fish hook. Well, don't practice on me. And I even practiced on myself a little bit because I was like, is that really an effective move? And I didn't even do it. I imagine. Yeah. Yeah.

It hurts me right now. I'm just trying it. I'm going to bring back vertically striped pants. Okay. Okay. And I'll fish hook you. Um, so how are you doing? It's been a little while.

Uh, no, it's been what three or four days in the magic of, uh, podcast releases. We're right on schedule. Okay. I have a story for you. It's here. It's tragic. I know. But it's interesting and it relates to what we're talking about, like any good intro

of shit. Great. Uh, in April, April, 2013, a woman was one, she was hiking through the Pyrenees in France with a couple of friends and she lost her footing and she fell 980 feet, about 300 meters to her death, obviously. And, um, of course her friends were like, Oh my God, they probably said something like soccer blue or something like that and contacted the authorities and the authorities got out there pretty quick within 45 minutes they located and reached her dead body.

But what they found was nothing but her bones and her tattered clothing and shoes 45 minutes within 45 minutes, the local Griffin vultures had picked the woman clean. Wow. She went from being alive to 45 minutes later being a skeleton and as gruesome as that is it's actually a really good sign if you are pulling for healthy vulture populations. Yeah. And you know what? That actually dispels a myth right off the bat.

Vultures actually prefer fresh meat. Yeah. Okay. They don't necessarily like rotten flesh, uh, but they will eat rotten flesh, but they prefer fresh meat of a dead carcass though. Right. Now, the reason why there were so many vultures why they were able to pick this woman clean is because there's a lot of Griffin vultures in France and the reason there's a lot and

the reason that they're hungry is because the French government says you can't shoot these vultures. Right. Leave them alone and also farmers burn your dead livestock. So you have a bunch of vultures that are protected from humans, which is their number one predator, right who are hungry because their food supplies being burned by said humans. So when an unlucky human slips and loses their footing in the Pyrenees, the vultures pick her dead body clean in 45 minutes.

That's pretty quick. Now, follow me, Chuck. Okay. Over to Nepal, the Himalayas. Ah, very nice. Back in the mountains. It is. Did you, I got my magic carpet cleaned.

It is very nice. It smells like a new car. It does. I have a new car sent spraying on it. Is that coconut? No, a new car. Oh, okay. Um, so in the Himalayas, you've got two different groups, the Zoroastres and the Tibetan Buddhists.

Yeah, and they hate each other. They are into sky burials. Remember those? Yeah. Sure. Okay. So you want to refresh everybody with a sky burial list? Yeah.

Sky burial is basically when you leave your loved one's body out in a field for the vultures to pick clean. Right. And Zoroastres. Very natural. And Buddhists both believe that you shouldn't just bury a dead body. Yeah. It shouldn't cream in a dead body.

It pollutes the earth. So you give it to the vultures, which are kind of these spiritual beings in both religions. They poop and that pollutes the earth. And the problem is, is there are so few vultures in the Himalayas these days that they can't take care of the dead bodies that they put out there. So the Zoroastres and Buddhists are having to like ship them out of the country. Really? Yes.

So they're not even able to perform sky burials? No, they do, but I mean, it's not, they're not fulfilled because there's not enough vultures. The reason why there's not enough vultures we found out in 2006 is because of a non-steroid oil, anti-inflammatory drug called? Diclofenac. Nice. Yeah.

And there are 23 species total worldwide of vulture on every continent, but Australia and Antarctica, which I was surprised in Australia, man. That's like, I bet they would have a ball out there. Yeah. You know? Vulture central. Yeah. It's just wide open territory and dead bodies everywhere.

Right. Especially if Nick Cave has anything to do with it. Right. And sadly, 14 of those species are endangered or threatened at this point. And the diclofenac is a big culprit. It's ranchers used it to, on their cattle, and then the vultures would eat and just like from one eating of dead cows would kill the vultures. Yeah.

It gave them a kidney failure. Yeah. And like the vultures would be on their perches and just fall over dead. And it wiped out three different species of vultures, eastern, old world vultures. Yeah. So like 95% of the three species were just wiped out. Yeah. I got 99 actually.

Wow. The good news is, is they banned it in 2006 in India. And in 2012, it actually, the population increased for the first time in many, many, many years. Yeah. And they're slightly on the uptick in that area of the world at least. But it was a huge like mystery of what was going on, you know, what was killing the vultures. And luckily for these vultures, their populations were dwindling in India. Indians very much prized the vulture as like a necessary creature to create, I guess, or

promote sanitary conditions in nature. Yeah. And if they're eating the sick animals, then the sick animal bacteria isn't going to get into the ground and leech into the water. And if there are no vultures around there, potentially could be like spikes and disease and things. Yeah. They're actually really necessary.

They really are. Not only are there spikes and diseases, vultures kind of take it for the team, the team being the rest of the earth. They step in and they enter seed. Like you said, like if there's a cow with some, with anthrax or something, a vulture eats the carcass, but the vultures digestive system is attuned to this acidity level that will kill most if not all of whatever disease that cattle had. And so it breaks the chain of infectious diseases.

Yeah. And so you think of vultures as like these very dirty animals, but they actually are performing this really specific and important ecological service to the rest of the world. Yeah. And this is some more like vultures are clean facts in a minute, which doesn't necessarily sound like, like vultures are clean. Well, we'll tell you, we don't want to know it. Yeah.

They're cleaner than you'd think. Exactly. That's a good way to say it. And also you were saying like they, if the vultures aren't around, disease can outbreak. Not only that, they're, the service that they perform is so vital. The service. It is. It's a service to an extent like they're basically nature's cleanup crew.

And they do it by eating rotting flesh and they do it really quick. Like in sky burials, before the decimation of the, of the Eastern species, the Indian species, they could take care of a dead body in like 30 minutes, 30 minutes. There's no other species that can do that. And so this service, it is a service that they provide vultures in LLC. It makes so much sense, evolutionarily speaking, that the old world species, right, that are in the Eastern Hemisphere and the new world species that are in the Western Hemisphere are not related.

They co-evolved two of the same thing, evolved from two different groups of animals. They're not related. So it's almost like nature was like, uh, yeah, this is never going to happen with these birds are never going to spread, but we're going to need them over here. So let's just have everything evolve into vultures. Vultures came up separately on two different sizes of the world. That's how important they are. Very important.

Yeah. Uh, the old world vultures, uh, which are Eastern Hemisphere, like we just said, uh, they're 12 species of those and they are related to hawks and eagles. They nest with sticks and things like you might see a vulture nest, like sticking out on a log, sticking out from a cliff, like it's a cartoon or something. That's how I imagine it. Western Hemisphere over here is where we have the new world ones, very progressive vultures. They don't build nest and they're just like, we're not into that cause we're, we like mid-century

modern digs. Exactly. And like the California condor, especially. Yeah. And you know, the condor is, uh, is rebounding to talk about in danger. They dipped to a low of 25 in the 1980s. Yeah. And now as of 2012, there are 405.

And they're pretty awesome. Their wingspans get to be like nine feet across. Yeah. I think the, it's not the California condor, but I think it's one in Africa that can get as high as 11, as wide as 11. That's a big bird, man. Yeah. It's huge.

Like that bird could take you down. Yeah. And I think people don't like vultures because they feed on carrion and it's sort of gross. People think another myth that they circle dying animals, just waiting for them to die. It's not true. No. But because they circle and because like a California condor can circle up to like 15,000 feet.

That's amazing. It is. But they smell these things, right? It depends. They have either really great sight or really great smell or both. So in North America, Turkey vultures have incredible sense of smell, but they're a new world species and they're unrelated to old world species. So it can go either way, but typically it's either their sight or their smell that's really,

really great. They're like the ones that look like they're wearing feather boas that are completely naked on the neck and head and then just have the big puffy black feathers around the neck. Well, let's talk about that. Why are vultures featherless on the head? Hygiene, because they're sticking those heads and necks into carrion and rotted flesh and it's actually just, you know, it's a nature's way of saying, I don't want your feathers, they're nice feathers to get covered with blood and guts.

So it's actually sanitary. They don't sing either. That's another reason vultures get a bad rap. There's no like vulture song like other birds. I guess people do like singing birds. Vultures grunt and hiss apparently are like the two sounds they make and that's not going to get you very far. If you're covered, if you're bald, wearing a feather boa grunting and hissing and you're

covered in like blood and guts, people aren't going to be like, what a nice bird. Well, yeah, it's not just people too, like apparently animals kind of, vultures are like on the outskirts of all organisms, like they have no natural predators. Any predators they do have are like egg hunting predators. They don't go after the live vulture, they go after the eggs and then like you will once in a while in times of extreme famine and hardship find like a big cat attacking a vulture. And for the most part, everything just leaves vultures alone, humans, bobcats, everybody just wants vultures, just stay over there and eat your rotting flesh, you're disgusting

things. Yeah, and they're considered birds of prey even though they rarely feed on live animals even though they will if they get hungry enough. They will, yeah, apparently in France where you can't kill a vulture and you have to burn your livestock. Are they attacking live animals? Yeah, they're taking away live animals. That's specific to old world vultures.

They have a grasping foot so they can carry away things like babies, like you said. New world vultures are more like chickens and they can run but they can't grasp. Yeah, and I don't even think the ones with the grasping feet are like, they're still not meant to grasp that much. Like from what I read, the talons, even on the ones that are able to do so, it's not like an eagle or a barn owl or anything, they can like snatch your cat off your back deck. So no feathers on the head or neck, it's sanitary and believe it or not, what's the other thing that makes them sanitary?

The urinate on themselves. What? Yeah, it's true. They pee on their own feet. Yeah, they pee on their feet and legs and it kills bacteria, it keeps them cool like our sweat does. Yeah, because that digestive system that has such a high acidity is transferred through their urine and when they pee on their feet, they're basically cleaning off all of the

nasty bacteria that got on their feet from crawling around the inside of a zebra or something. Yeah, I'm proud of you for saying urinate and urine. Urine. That pee pee. You know what a group of vultures is called? I love those questions, it's always like a gaggle. I know what a crow, I know what a group of crows is called. Everyone knows that.

What is that, a murder? I didn't know everybody knew that. Apparently vultures have a lot of names. It can be a group that's usually called a committee, which like we said, they're a necessary service. Right. So it's a committee. A venue or a vault.

The vault sounds familiar. The vault of vultures. When they're in flight, they're known as a kettle, which I thought was interesting. When they're feeding, a group is known as a wake. Thank you, John Muir. Yeah, probably so. Thank you for going off in the woods and doing your thing. All right.

So I guess we should get to vulture vomit, as if we weren't grossed out enough by eating dead flesh and pee-pee-ing yourself. Yeah, because you're saying like they don't sink, they pee on themselves, they feed on dead animals. They'll eat your dead relative. One other thing that vultures are very much noted for is vomiting in times of stress and they're freaked out when they feel like they're being preyed upon. When they're startled, vulture will throw up, it's called defensive vomiting.

No, hold on, hold on. I think now is a good time for a little message break. Okay, and then we'll talk about defensive vomiting. I promise. Okay. Stuff you shouldn't know. You've been dreaming about this baby your entire life, a small, beautiful bundle of joy that deserves only the best.

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For today at visitmississipi.org slash family fun, Mississippi, Wanderers Welcome. Back to vomit. Yeah, when they throw up, they can get away a lot quicker. Yeah, like I just ate four pounds of cat meat and I just puked it up so I can fly out of here quickly. Exactly. So that's one reason that avian biologists think that they throw up defensively. The other one is this.

It's a decoy. It's a present to their predator like, don't eat meat, eat this. Really? Yeah, and a lot of predators more often than not will eat whatever they vomited back up because it's not always like digested flesh. It can be something like a big bite of meat that they just chewed very recently. Yeah, so that's how they feed their little baby vultures. So it's regurgitation like many birds do.

So it may not be so different for an eagle to swoop down and say like, hey, that cat meat looks like it's just, you just vomited it up and you just ate it. So what's the big deal? Right. And eagles actually do bald eagle specifically love to eat vulture vomit, which is weird because think about this, like the bald eagle is a revered animal. But it's not bald. The vulture is.

And it eats vulture vomit. Vultures do the vomiting. Yeah. It's like turning everything just on its head. You're anti-American. That is not true. So the other cool thing, I guess you might say about vulture vomit is it's actually a defense in that it's highly acidic.

Like we're talking pH levels between one and two, which is more than gastric and hydrochloric acid in our own stomach and more corrosive than acid rain. So like that's some acidic vomit. Yeah. I mean, it's more corrosive than acid rain. It's like if you, if you, I guess poured acid rain on something though, you'd be like, you're going to, this will eventually do something to you, maybe this is, if you're a statue, this is going to harm you in 30 years.

Well we're talking pH levels. Yeah. I remember acid rain kills fish in the acid rain podcast we did. So yeah, I guess if a fish comes up and scares the vulture, it's in trouble. Or if you bought a goldfish and you filled up your little goldfish bowl with acid rain, it might, it probably is not good for the vulture. Vulture vomit. That's true.

If this is in trouble. The point is it's highly acidic and even more so than other birds of prey and carnivorous birds. Yeah. So like the vultures kick it up a notch. So and that's, that's how the vulture doesn't die from eating bacteria that would probably kill other animals. So Chuck, that's also their, their digestive juices are how they avoid getting sick, eating

things that would like kill you or me. Yeah. See that's a good point because I think people probably wonder how can they eat all this like rancid disease and bacteria rotted flesh. That's how the pH of their stomach, most things can survive. Although they, they aren't perfect killing microbe killing machines. You can find traces of say like anthrax spores in their stool after they eat infected meat. But for the most part, the fact that vultures eat things that may contain disease.

Have the ability to contain that disease and are naturally reviled by pretty much everything else under the sun and stay away from everything else. They are really great at breaking the chain of infectious disease and nature and endangered and threatened. So like be nice, be kind to vultures. Yeah. I would encourage vultures, if you're listening, learn a song or two, wouldn't hurt. You know, maybe I'd like to teach the world to sing.

There you go. That melts everybody's heart. Yeah. Yeah. Any carpenter standard. Oh, for sure. And also, it may be like one Christmas song just for the holidays. That's a great one.

Uh, if you have a problem with vultures still, hear me now. Vultures in the absence of a healthy vulture population, there are still lots of rotting carcasses more than there would be if the vultures were around. And where there's rotting carcasses, there's feral dog packs and where there's feral dog packs, there's rabies and dogs don't stay away from humans like vultures do. They attack humans. That populations blow up too when vultures aren't around. So, leave the vultures alone.

Good point. I got one more little tidbit for you. Okay. Um, they're actually using vultures now in forensic science. In the Journal of Forensic Science International, they took a body out, um, researcher, uh, Katharine, Katharine Spradley of Texas State University, San Marcos. Oh, they have a body farm, remember? Yep.

Go Boko the Cat. For real? Boko the Bobcat. Um, and I actually had to look that one up. Yeah. Um, they have a body farm, like you said, and they recently took a body, dumped it out there to see how long it would take vultures to skeletonize it and distribute the remains. Because basically, their aim is to see how long it takes vultures to discover a body,

how long it takes the vultures to skeletonize it, how far they will distribute the parts, uh, what they do and don't eat, because essentially when you find a body in the woods, sometimes it can be ravaged and you don't know, like, why are there no bite marks? Who ravaged this body? How long has this body been here? That's great. Why are we finding body parts all over the place? Is this some kind of sicko that's like tearing these bodies to pieces?

So it's, uh, it's a forensic study and, um, they got a video camera triggered by motion and it took, uh, 37 days actually to be triggered and 30, a 30 strong wake of American black vultures. Wow. Um, took care of the body in five hours and both of those results surprise, like how long it took them to get there and how long it took them to skeletonize it, because it's like way longer than usual, like we said. Yeah.

Well, 300 can take care of a body in like 30 minutes, so 30 and five hours is not too bad. I thought it was a long, um, and then they got a spatial pattern of the discarded body parts, mapped it with the GPS over 15 weeks and they're hoping that this pattern like aids, you know, forensics in the future. How far has it gone? Do they say? No, they didn't say.

Huh. Pretty interesting though. Yeah. That's very interesting. Forensics. Vultures. Saving people from being unfairly accused of being a grisly serial killer. Exactly.

Um, also one last thing. If you are interested and probably are flush with cash, you can go paragliding with vultures in the Himalayas. There's a man who's trained vultures, so you go flying on, you know, a parasail. You fly attached to a vulture. No, you fly attached to the dude who trained the vultures on a parasail. And the vultures like hang around. Yeah, they fly around you.

They said it's like swimming with dolphins, but like 5,000 feet in the air and they will eat buffalo meat out of your hand. Really? And then you can put it on your arm and eat and then like fly around and they're like, thank you. One of them's name is Kevin, the vulture. Really? Yeah.

Well, they let you paraglide with buffalo meat dangling from your ankles? Maybe. Probably. Man, this is, I'd like to do that. That's now on my bucket list. On the chucket list. On the chucket list. Uh, is that it?

Yeah, that's it. Okay. That is everything about vultures that we can find everybody. We hope you enjoyed it and let's see if you want to learn more about vultures, type vulture into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And since I said that, it means it's time for a message break. Today's message break will come at three o'clock. Wherever you choose to wander, plan your next dining adventure at visitmississippi.org

slash dining, Mississippi, Wanderers Welcome. And how about some Listener Mail, huh? Yeah, this one's sort of long now that I'm looking at it, but oh wait, wait. Before we do that, can I plug somebody? Yeah. Okay, so we are not 100% sure. I don't think we did plug this guy before. We're plugging him again after we did.

Yeah. What's the harm? Exactly. Thomas Trask was one of the finalists in our Halloween horror fiction contest that we held last year, right? Yeah. And we said anybody who made it in the sweet 16, or actually I think anybody who entered, if you went on to publish anything, let us know and we would plug.

So Thomas Trask did just that. He wrote a book called Prism. It's a sci-fi fantasy and it's on Amazon and you can buy it as paperback or Kindle. So it's Thomas Trask with Prism and it's probably pretty sweet because he wrote one of my favorite stories, Quantum Suicide of Alice Walker. Yeah, that was a good one. It was mimebending. It was.

So I would strongly recommend anything Trask writes, frankly. Okay, now it's time for some Listener Mail. How about that? Yeah, this is an oldie. It's about tipping, but it's a pretty good tipping story. There's a bartender in Vancouver. Did you read this one? No, no.

Every time I go into a coffee place now and I don't tip them, I'm like, do you listen to the podcast? All right, guys, I was working for an upscale cocktail bar in downtown Vancouver. Great relaxing, cool atmosphere. Three dudes walk in Friday night, sat at the bar, and we're part of a bachelor party. Being a bartender, I'm pretty used to this and I realize there could be a lot of money made if I take care of these guys. To confirm it, one of the three guys did one of these numbers where he says, we're going

to be here having fun this weekend. We're going to take care of you if you give us some special attention. You know that guy? Yeah. So I went and put buffalo meat on my ankles. They ordered cocktails and beers, ordered in rounds. I made sure I knew their orders, their names, and gave them new drinks when they were getting low.

I basically gave them really good attention, needless to say. It was great service. At the end of the night, after all the shots and drinks, Bill was about 800 bucks. The very same guy who told me I'd be taken care of, paid with his credit card in full, handed me a billfold, and inside was a nickel, five cents. Saturday night comes around, 9 p.m., same guys roll in, thought about what happened the night before, and decided to be a good person, be the better man, and greeted them by name in the smile, brought out their usual drinks, acted like everything was normal,

even though I was being eaten alive inside. By the time their bill came, it was even more than the night before. Tonight, another nickel. So that's 10 cents on 1,700 bucks. Sunday night rolls around. What do you know, the philanthropist roll in. Still aggravated, I was firm that I would be the better person still, and act like it didn't affect me.

Oh yeah, man, I would be spitting in so many drinks. Even if it was to spite them, I was still going to be nice. Drinks were shaken, beers report, around 800 bucks again, another nickel. Monday comes around, the same guy comes in on the day shift, and thinking that they're starting early, asked if he wanted their as usual. He said no, he was alone, wouldn't be long. Sat down, pulled out an envelope, put it on the bar. He told me he really wanted to give his friend a great bachelor party, and had heard great

things about the bar. He'd never met someone more professional and welcoming, even when they made nothing out of it. He told me that he has gone to a few bars and done this in the past, and got to the point at some places where they wouldn't even serve them on the second night. Yet I acted like nothing had ever happened. He really appreciated this, thanked me, and pointed at the envelope, said it was for me and walked out.

I almost didn't want to open it, but I'm thinking it would be another nickel. Inside was $2,000. Wow. Couldn't believe it. I was ready to kill these people all weekend, and now I've just made two grand for keeping my cool. And that man was Don Cheadle, the family man. I figured you might find it interesting, and that is Brett from Vancouver, he still

has the nickels. And I say, good for you, two grand tip, and I also say, what a jerk to put this guy through this as some sort of like twisted test of how nice a bartender can be. Right, he's really like using the social power dynamic between customer and server. Nothing funny about it, or fun about it. I've done this before, and people have treated me like a jerk accordingly. Yeah, and he's really risking having things put in his drink, too. I just don't get it.

I would go walk in and say, on day one, this two grand is yours at the end of the weekend if you take care of us. Yeah. Like do the opposite. Yeah, I mean, definitely. Yeah. Or just tip like a normal person. Yeah, you can just do that.

And don't play games. Yeah, every time. All right. Yeah. That's my tipping story. That's a good story. Yeah. Good for you.

What was the name again? Brett from Vancouver. Way to go, Brett. If you have a good story about how somebody mistreated you and then treated you well in the end, but you're not still sure if that made up for everything, we want to hear that story. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com, stuff you should know.

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