FaktowoVulture blood resists anthrax and cholera. Scientists now know why
Vultures eat carrion full of bacteria that would kill any other animal. Their stomach is as acidic as battery acid.
AI imageA vulture can eat meat that has lain in the sun for several days. For a human, such a meal would end in hospital, and often worse. For a vulture, it is just dinner.
Researchers from the University of Copenhagen analysed the microbiome and digestive system of black vultures and condors. The result: a vulture's stomach has a pH close to 1, about the same as battery acid. Most bacteria die in it within minutes.
Not just acid
Acid is only the first line of defence. Bacteria that survive reach the intestines, where the vulture tolerates species considered deadly, including Clostridium and Fusobacterium. Scientists suspect a kind of truce: the vulture does not fight them, and in return they help it digest food.
This concerns us too. Vultures remove carrion from the ecosystem before diseases can develop in it. In India, where more than 95 per cent of vultures died out in the 1990s, the number of feral dogs and cases of rabies in humans rose sharply.
What this means
The vulture is not a "dirty" bird. It is the most effective sanitation service known to nature. Without it, carrion lies around for longer, and the bacteria with it.
- Roggenbuck M. et al., “The microbiome of New World vultures”, Nature Communications, 2014
- Houston D. C., Cooper J. E., “The digestive tract of the whiteback griffon vulture and its role in disease transmission among wild ungulates”, Journal of Wildlife Diseases, 1975
- Markandya A. et al., “Counting the cost of vulture decline – An appraisal of the human health and other benefits of vultures in India”, Ecological Economics, 2008
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