Vulture shortage threatens Zoroastrian burial rites
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I personally witnessed this in the city trash dump of Tegucigalpa. Emaciated cattle grazing in trash, with cultures circling above them.
Do you remember where you heard it's a myth? I'd be curious to see how that argument was made.
They're not very vocal and are very social, so circling over carcasses might be a way to signal to others that they've found something.
They also form kettles as a big communal thing, too, for neither of those purposes. I've seen as many as 50 or 60 circling together for well over an hour, with no food nearby and no clearly no interest in going anywhere else.
(This is all turkey vultures in the US. These African vultures might have different behaviors, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are mostly comparable in terms of variety and sophistication)
George the turkey vulture: It's a nice day to hang out circling.
Rambo the turkey vulture: Hey George, let's hang.
Pappias the turkey vulture: Where's the food? No food. LOL. You guys!
All: LOL (but silently).
Sydney the turkey vulture: Where's the food? No food. LOL. You guys!
All: LOL (but silently).
Violet the turkey vulture: Where's the food? No food. LOL. You guys!
All: LOL (but silently).
Sydney the turkey vulture: Where's the food? No food. LOL. You guys!
All: LOL (but silently).
Seven the turkey vulture: Where's the food? No food. LOL. You guys!
All: LOL (but silently).
Arnold the turkey vulture: Where's the food? No food. LOL. You guys!
All: LOL (but silently).
Angel the turkey vulture: Where's the food? No food. LOL. You guys!
All: LOL (but silently).
...
60 vultures later someone observes 60 vultures circling and concludes:
A. There's definitely no carcass, as that's a myth.
B. There's definitely a carcass, as there's 60 vultures.
C. I'm going to find some water to drink.
And yeah, on close read, you'll see that they're all trying to communicate that you can't assume that the vultures are circling a carcass whenever you see them circling because they have other behaviors that involve circling as well. But it's an easy detail to miss in some of them for sure!
I’ve read elsewhere vultures are actually good signals of gas leaks for this reason.
They don’t have much of a reason to circle a carcass they intend to eat unless perhaps it’s a lagging indicator and they’re leaving the carcass. They don’t circle dying things because they don’t have the means to detect dying things.
I’m not convinced circling vultures is a good sign that there’s a carcass below them.
I’ve worked with vultures at a raptor conservancy. They are social, curious and intelligent birds. I have very fond memories of an Egyptian vulture named Boe who would unfailingly undoe my shoelaces when I entered her aviary. I love these birds
Mostly because it's laid out as "But that begs yet another question...", to which the answer is equally fascinating.
Also, it was just satisfying having a story with an ending: cause, found.
I tried to research the Zoroastrian procedure, but it got gory pretty fast.
That said, I'm not arguing the official explanation is wrong, just curious if the same thing would happen at the towers.
Sure. Voltaren.
A few years ago, we found a few fresh dead (poisoned) rats in our barn.
The turkey vulture population immediately dropped to zero at our house, and the rodent population skyrocketed for the next year.
Please use traps (electrocution or old-fashioned wood and metal spring work best. The electrocution ones are more pet-friendly), and not poison to deal with your vermin.
On a related note, we also have started to get Peregrine Falcons and Bald Eagles again.
Hopefully those populations will continue to recover too.
Poisoned rodents often wander around confused and screaming before they die, and if they do that in a field, they can take out a bird of prey instead of just the vultures.
Seriously, just use the traps. They are way more humane. Also, you won’t have to fish dead animals out of your vents and walls.
One of my favorite pest-control measures is furry and purrs when I stroke him. Currently we don't have rodents, but he likes to catch insects as well.
These are urban rats specifically which are larger and may not apply to country rats
In our case it was more suburban rats, sometimes they did get big, yes.
https://pixeldrain.com/u/hocUQxjk proof :)
Predator finds prey aplenty, and so is fruitful and multiplies. Then prey becomes so numerous, it eats prey until there are few left. Predator then has a population crash, and the prey rebound without predation.
Over and over this happens.
Is that what is happening here? Perhaps, as carrion eaters are susceptible too, when this happens to other populations. After all, during this cycle prey and predator both crash... leaving less carrion. And then of course carrion eaters can overpopulate too..
So I wonder, is this just another clickbait headline?
No. As the article makes abundantly clear there’s plenty of carrion, it’s just poisoned. Nothing natural about it.
The loss of the towers of silence is a turducken of human incompetence.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?nelat=40.7014779017...
The challenge can be solved entirely by vaccines, it’s just not prioritized. You can simply “cull” a sick cow and sell the diseased meat in the grocery store.
The article doesn’t say what the inflammatory diseases in the cows are in India, but I wonder if it’s the same.
Edit: Yes, researchers have identified widespread Paratuberculosis infections in India. “Our research on screening of over 26,000 domestic livestock for MAP infection using 4 different diagnostic tests (microscopy, culture, ELISA and PCR), during last 31 years has shown that the average bio-load of MAP in the livestock population of India is very high (cattle 43%, buffaloes 36%, goats 23% and sheep 41%).” [1]
Zoroastrianism is fascinating and probably first major monotheistic religion and later ie judaism took a heavy inspiration from it. So much for everybody yelling how holiest their truth is and how chosen they specifically are, a lot of folks and mankind overall would benefit massively if they traveled more and more remote. I know I did.
They have concrete building not far where they put their dead instead, forgot the exact procedure unfortunately but clearly its still ok within their religion. If in holiest city of whole religion which houses 'eternal flame' they can manage this, maybe other places should take a note too?
Sepehr:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xf4FOpS1rU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBkgI34mMH0
NOT Sepehr:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fI8rXPalMA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcMUBpC4leM
(Do your due dilligence!)
Zoroastrianism is such a fascinating topic.
The fact that Iran is for all intents and purposes an Islamic theocracy with a veneer of democracy on top probably has something to do with this.
Or do you have more of personal experiences from Iran that contradict mine?
I've also been to beautifully restored old christian church in the heart of the big city (forgot which one, maybe Isfahan), no issues I just went in, there were masses happening there regularly. No hassle anywhere.
Those two things plus lots of secrecy around actual beliefs and practices (that one’s less of a problem with Zoroastrianism iirc) seemed to always be factors in a book I once read about vanishing near-East religions. Basically mimetic-evolutionary action, if the religion has the wrong properties it’ll tend to decline.
This is a non-sequitur and travel definitely will not solve the issue. People are very well aware of the many other religions even now currently being practiced and are still convinced theirs is correct.
But seeing culture, people, history, and religions too puts a massive perspective change. I could see that ie my wife traveling across India backpacking had her eyes opened quite brutally compared to her strict catholic upbringing, and it was definitely this cultural/religious shock.
Seeing other religions as equal to yours - how many folks do you know that actually have that? Seeing refugees not as bothersome scum coming to rape and steal and take social payments but same people as you, with same type of dreams, fears etc... again this ain't something you will ever get to from watching news, and that's how most people get all their relevant info, thats the folks likes of trump feed from, from their fears and hate for things they don't actually know, only heard about.
Being treated the nicest from poorest people of the world (dalits in India in my case), complete stranger yet they shared the very little they had with me, and helped me tremendously, repeatedly.
There is tons of islamophobia in Europe, especially in eastern part but I can see it literally everywhere. Most folks like that I talked to have absolutely 0 clue, they just pick few worst news about terrorism attacks, some 'alternate' media talking same stuff for 2 decades. Yes going to all-inclusive package tour to say Egypt and staying in absolute tourist bubble for 2 weeks ain't going to change anybody. I wasn't talking about that sort of traveling, but exact opposite of it.
I’m not sure what country you’re from, but in my current city there are large successful populations of Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, Christians, and Buddhists.
If you grow up not exposed to that, I can see how travel might help for people with an open mind. But let me assure you, a very annoyingly large percentage of the population (something like 20%) thinks everyone not in their religion is a lesser human.
Whereas if you go to a human composting place and ask to be composted, you get packed into a tube with enough wood chips and straw to create the right carbon to nitrogen ratio and a few scoops of microbes and fungi and held at an optimum temperature and oxygen content until you turn into soil. Then you get delivered in the back of a pickup truck and hopefully someone uses you to plant a tree or something.
Not to say that burial is always mutually exclusive with returning your nutrients to the earth - just that the default approach to burial these days isn't so good at it.
What is human composting and should it be legalised? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-27/calls-to-legalise-hum...
mos_basik mostly has it aside from bone grinding at some point, human skulls turning over in the market garden can be disconcerting and a nuisance for law enforcement so it's considered polite to remove and|or grind them.
There is an excellent documentary about this in Spanish: https://youtu.be/4bLO8d0e9O4?si=z2BUAz-90BhWGBdl
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_mythology
Likewise, "our culture is dying" seems like an overly-dramatic catch phrase for, "we don't like it that circumstances are changing and reducing our ability to do things in the manner to which we've become accustomed and are now entitled."
EDIT: As another commenter correctly says, it's not a great idea to drive vultures into extinction. My comment is about people whinging about it in a way that suggests it's all about them.
Before our arrival, there was war between Native nations, cultural change due to trade and new inventions, and so on.
Unless people believe that Natives didn't have new ideas, this is clearly so. And Native history shows change!
To imagine that 500 years later, no music, language, culture, technology would have changed, is a massive disservice to both the intellect and capabilities of those peoples.
Yet we enable things such as unrestrained hunting, and even whale hunting, for cultural reasons.
As if a healthy Native nation wouldn't stop hunting endangered species! Come on!
So yes, static "this is the way it was" is a load of hurtful outcomes.
For all we know, Natives might have invented our tech by now, had we not intervened.
The North American megafauna didn’t disappear all by themselves. More recently, the Maori certainly made some species go extinct in New Zealand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Zealand_species_ex...
If you’re going to recognize that natives/first nations/etc. have agency then we have to accept the good and the bad instead of infantilizing them according to some fantasy ideal.
We have hunting quotas, and attempt to mitigate over fishing, and so on. Yes, we aren't perfect, but we try.
My point was, if a contempary Native nation existed, had modern agriculture methods, and was able to subsist without hunting? I suspect they would self regulate as we do.
Basically, people need to stop moving around and hunting to live, which means crops and domesticated food/work animals. And large cities for a strong industrial base.
There were few places where all that came together. Maybe the Incans? But they also has waterways and slaves.
But I agree, the timing was short.
On that we definitely agree! My comment is about people making it all about them.
This could be the laziest definition of culture that I’ve read so far.
I suppose I could have added "Here," to be more clear that it's not a definition.
There, I fixed it.