January 30, 2004

The main cause behind the catastrophic decline of Asian vultures may have been found. Hopefully this will lead to less use of the drug, and the Parsis won't have to resort to solar panels.
posted by homunculus 20 years ago
  • we're all carrion. That's all we are.
  • Carry on, then!
  • Are any organizations planning legal action against the manufacturers/distributors of this drug?
  • I wonder if the breeders are feeding the animals diclofenac just in case they hurt. Doesn't seem logical they enough of the animals have serious inflammatory deseases to need big enough doses to kill carrion eaters. Or, maybe it's our modern inclination to give every drug possible to make sure that no food animal will die before it can be harvested? Some years ago, Mexican produce was close to being banned from the US because of the tendency to use a chemical soup of every pesticide known, whether they were needed or not. Maybe a little education would help in both cases.
  • Nah, let them evolve resistance. Seriously, what path said. Probably breeders are misusing the drug. Legal action against drug manufacturers won't solve the problem alone. They also need a change in policy and education.
  • Before finding a solution to this (or any) problem, it's helpful gather as much information as possible. It would be useful to know how this drug works -- and how, in particular, it affects birds. It would also be useful to know what tests, if any, were made on birds with the drug by the manufacturer before its release. Other questions, too, spring to mind-- what instructions are on the containers; whether any training is required of those who use it in the affected countries; and whether its use is limited to, say, vets or physicians or agricultural advisers, or can just anyone acquire it; where the drug come from, how is it supposed to be administered, and who typically purchases it. I don't think I know enough yet to reach any hard and fast conclusions, but getting the drug's manufacturers to endorse avian protection, and, hopefully, interested in controlling or curtailing indiscriminate distribution seems the most promising area to consider first. The scope of the problem makes this an international concern. Have to wonder what the effects on other animals and fish might be. Does it get into the water or the grass or what happens when carcasses decay? Have any other studies been done yet on this?
  • beeswacky: you may be to sexy (or rational) for your name. Nothing whacky about that comment.
  • Oh, um, ah...of course, just so, dear Path, absolutely, irrefutably, and definitely too sexy, ahem, hmm.
  • Carry on, then! posted by Wolof OH, GAG!! I would have thought that was below even YOUR standards, Wolof. *slaps Wolof with a buzzard craw Vulture looking at? There's nothing to see here. Go on about your bizzness.
  • No statute of limitations on puns, then? Many thanks for the updates, homunculus.
  • Whip me with a feather, horsie.
  • Watching the Vulture at the Road Kill Alicia E. Stallings You know Death by his leisure—take The time we saw the vulture make His slow, hot-air-balloon descent To a possum smashed beside the pavement. We stopped the car to watch. Too close. He bounced his moon-walk bounce and rose With a shrug up to the kudzu sleeve Of a pine, to wait for us to leave. What else can afford to linger? The eagle has his trigger-finger, Quails and doves their shell-shocked nerves— There is no peace but scavengers.
  • you touch me, vulture shred-pecker sinew-snapper worn bare where your crest would be if you weren't forever dining in gut-puller old flapper in your wingspread cape of feathers always first among the strippers at each final feast peering through those shadowed sockets with the gravest courtesy now I know you heartstring-tugger feel free to pick a bone with me
  • WOW Bees, IMHO that's one of your best! You must really be inspired by those old grizzle guts.
  • Vulture's a useful fellow. In Tibet, dismemberment of a corpse is followed by the vultures feasting, a practice going back for centuries. I'm pleased ye like it, BlueHorse.
  • Vultures Achebe In the greyness and drizzle of one despondent dawn unstirred by harbingers of sunbreak a vulture perching high on broken bone of a dead tree nestled close to his mate his smooth bashed-in head, a pebble on a stem rooted in a dump of gross feathers, inclined affectionately to hers. Yesterday they picked the eyes of a swollen corpse in a water-logged trench and ate the things in its bowel. Full gorged they chose their roost keeping the hollowed remnant in easy range of cold telescopic eyes ... Strange indeed how love in other ways so particular will pick a corner in that charnel-house tidy it and coil up there, perhaps even fall asleep - her face turned to the wall! ... Thus the Commandant at Belsen Camp going home for the day with fumes of human roast clinging rebelliously to his hairy nostrils will stop at the wayside sweet-shop and pick up a chocolate for his tender offspring waiting at home for Daddy's return ... Praise bounteous providence if you will that grants even an ogre a tiny glow-worm tenderness encapsulated in icy caverns of a cruel heart or else despair for in every germ of that kindred love is lodged the perpetuity of evil.
  • vulture knows us from the inside out he's willing to catch whoever drops out he knows that men will soldier on and he likes the way we carrion
  • OH BEES! HOW COULD YOU!! *clutches ribcage, gasps
  • Vulture Robinson Jeffers I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling high up in heaven, And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit narrowing, I understood then That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight-feathers Whistle above me and make their circle and come nearer. I could see the naked red head between the great wings Bear downward staring. I said, "My dear bird, we are wasting time here. These old bones will still work; they are not for you." But how beautiful he looked, gliding down On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the sea-light over the precipice. I tell you solemnly That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten by that beak and become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes-- What a sublime end of one's body, what an enskyment; what a life after death.
  • peck after peck without great fuss vulture with his long bare neck goes to the very heart of us
  • each cow that falls into a ditch and can't escape is vulture's pitch dear vulture heads the clean-up crew and tidies after me and you
  • I'd like you to meet my new BFF. He just "love(s) the putrid smell of dead human flesh." And soon he'll be your ONLY friend.
  • Well, at least he'll come and find you when you get lost in the desert. He might take a while...
  • Yeah! Condors are so cool.