A black kite has been alerted by the feeding frenzy. But there is plenty of food for all. Some try to get down as much as they can whilst others tear off bite-size portions to carry back to their nest. The vultures nest high in the cliffs of the Rhodope Mountains. Feb 22, 2018 Warning, Contains Some Upsetting Scenes. In this video from the BBC we take a very close look at the aggressive feeding behaviour of vultures at a carcass.
Feeding Frenzy Vultures Youtube
The Disappearance of the Vultures
In 1989, India was over-run by rotting flesh, plagues of flies, and rabid dogs – all because they lost some birds. As many as 44 million vultures, 99 percent of several species, had disappeared across Asia almost overnight — and no one knew why. It was a complete mystery.
Historical vulture populationsGoutam Narayan/RSPB
India used to have very large vulture populations and it is important to understand why and how this fits with Indian culture. Vultures are birds of prey that live in communities and human environments and are very dependent on human activities. 80 percent of the Indian population is Hindu, and as a culture, Hinduism is particularly favorable to vultures.
Hindus do not eat cows, which they consider sacred. Cows are used, however, for milk products and as beasts of burden. When a cow dies, it is not eaten by humans, but by vultures. Of the estimated 500 million head of cattle in India, only 4 percent are destined for consumption by humans as meat.
Vultures are therefore India's optimal natural animal disposal system, processing carcasses even in cities. Up to 15,000 vultures have been observed at the carcass depositories of New Delhi. In the 1990s, scientists and naturalists began noticing a decrease in the number of vultures in the skies over India. As this decline accelerated, they and others in the international scientific community looked to find the reason.
Feeding Frenzy Vultures Video
The loss of these birds had several unexpected results:
- As carcasses once eaten by vultures now rotted in village fields, drinking water became seriously contaminated.
- The disappearance of vultures has allowed other species, such as rats and wild dogs, to take their place. These newly abundant scavengers, however, are not as efficient as vultures. While a vulture's metabolism is in fact a true 'dead-end' for pathogens, dogs and rats instead become carriers of the pathogens and therefore spread diseases throughout human populations such as rabies, anthrax and plague.
- Today in India, 30,000 people die from rabies each year, more than half the world's total. A person is bitten every 2 seconds, and one dies from rabies every 30 minutes. India today has an estimated 18 million wild dogs, the largest population of carnivores in the world.
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