VULTURES are not exactly picky eaters. The carcasses on which they dine swiftly decompose, broken down by micro-organisms that excrete a range of nasty toxins. This makes decaying flesh a perilous source of food for most animals. Vultures, by contrast, either wait until their chosen corpse has decayed enough for them to peck through its often tough skin, or find a quicker way in via natural orifices. They frequently choose the fast-food route, inserting their head deep into the anus of large decomposing animals and exposing themselves to a mass of faeces-borne pathogens. Far from haute cuisine, then.Just how far is described by the first-ever genomic analysis of the micro-organisms found on and in the facial skin and large intestine of vultures, published this week in Nature Communications. Warning: this is not lunchtime reading.Among an average of 528 types of bacterium found on the heads of 50 turkey and black vultures were those that can cause botulism, gangrene, tetanus, septicaemia, blood clots and metastatic abscesses in other animals. And although these birds did not have it, another study found Bacillus anthracis...
from The Economist: Science and technology http://ift.tt/1vSnF7F
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