Tomorrow is an international holiday! It is International Vulture Awareness Day. When you wake up tomorrow, take in a breath of fresh air and notice the absence of rotten meat smell (unless you forgot about that week old chicken in the fridge or you are a stay at home butcher). Life on earth would be very stinky if these obligate scavengers were not around.
If you're not in the meat industry or drive in areas with lots of road kill, you may forget about vultures and their eating habits. Therefore, I wanted to share the following picture. It was taken this past weekend on my monitoring trip to Msikaba Cape Vulture Colony in Mkambati Nature Reserve in the Eastern Cape Province. To put it in context, this was on a Saturday. This day is reserved for celebrations and ceremonies in the amaXhosa communities. This time of year (September, October) are perfect for large traditional ceremonies in rural communities in South Africa because it is not too warm or cold. These ceremonies normally involve the slaughtering of a cow. Since people in these areas rarely have refrigerators, the animal must be eaten immediately. However, not all parts of the animal will be eaten and the leftovers are 'thrown away'. These leftovers are then cleaned up by dogs and vultures. So check out this photo of 'leftovers' and a group of over 20 Cape Vultures eyeing it up. Too cool!
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| Cape Vultures by 'leftover' meat in the former Transkei, South Africa. Photo by A.R. Rakotoarivelo. |
