Feb 12, 2006

Corpse-eating Ugly

Here is the long overdue African vulture. When you search for these birds online, you get a lot of sob stories about how they are persecuted and misunderstood.

Here's what you need to know. They eat carcasses. Their heads are largely bald so that when they stick them inside bloated corpses, they won't come back out too covered with festering diseases. That pretty much sums them up. True, they form a vital function within the African biosphere, but boy are they ugly. Would you like one as a pet? Would you like a flock of these hanging out in your backyard? Didn't think so.
















Photo courtesy: web.utk.edu.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You should check out the vultures in Mumbai. They are used to eat human corpses. That's right, dead people. The Parsees in India do not bury or cremate their dead but left them on "Towers of Silence" to be eaten by vultures.