A good question which Professor Lars Hestbjerg Hansen from the Department of Environmental Science at Aarhus University has helped to answer together with a team of national and international colleagues. Their research results can now be read in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

But dear reader, should you be sitting there with a cookie to accompany your morning coffee then be forewarned; the following lines describe the researchers' results and they can easily cause a little nausea. 

Certain death

When eating, vultures tear apart the carcass with gusto and if the skin of the dead animal is too difficult to get through, they don’t hesitate and happily go through the carcass’ anus to get to the meal waiting for them inside.

A vulture’s diet of rotten meat would lead to certain death for the majority of other living creatures, but fatal microbes such as anthrax bacteria appear not to affect these scavengers.

Bacteria samples from 50 vultures

The researchers found an explanation of why vultures can tolerate such a diet by gathering bacteria samples from the heads and intestines of 50 vultures and then DNA testing the samples. They found DNA from at least 528 different microorganisms in the heads, while they only found DNA from 76 microorganisms in the stomachs. Meaning that there is a significant decomposition of bacteria during the journey from a vulture’s head to its stomach. But despite this decomposition, there were still some very dangerous bacteria in the stomach.

Based on their results, the researchers concluded that the vultures had developed an extremely robust gastrointestinal system that is able to withstand many dangerous bacteria. They also concluded that vultures have developed a tolerance towards the very dangerous bacteria found in their stomachs.

The study was a collaboration between Aarhus University, Centre for GeoGenetics (Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen), the Department of Biology (University of Copenhagen), the Technical University of Denmark, the Zoo in Copenhagen and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

Source: scitech.au.dk: Current news

Translated by Peter Lambounre.