There are few things more beautiful than a vulture feasting on some good old fashioned road kill. Among those few things, is a vulture feasting on some good old fashioned road kill butt-first!
Vultures, despite their horrifying large talons, somehow lack the strength to tear into the flesh of sizeable meats. They basically rely on larger scavengers to cut their food before they can eat it, just like you did when you were a baby. Hey look at that, you and vultures have more in common than you thought!
Unfortunately, there’s some bad news for vultures and those of us (none of us) who love watching them feast. As a result of hunting, there are fewer large prey around to prepare vultures’ food. This means vultures (much like Omarion and Chris Brown in the song hit ‘Post to Be’) have to “eat the booty like groceries.” Without large prey to help them, vultures will eat their way into the carcass via the softest part of the body, the eyeballs (yum!) and the butt!
While this may sound like a win-win, its actually having adverse effects on vultures. The butt-first method has always been a culinary technique in the vulture world, but it’s being relied upon with increasing frequency — a problem because it’s 1) slower overall and 2) exposes the birds to more bacteria (surprise!). Though they’ve found a way to tolerate the bacteria that causes ulcers in humans (can’t science use this to help people?) it will be hard to predict the impact of this new eating system, which we’re responsible for because we’re killing all the big cats, of course.
