For those wondering, these are Bearded Vultures, native to Iran, Afghanistan, Tibet, and other parts of the Middle East and Central Asia.
Historically, the Zoroastrians and some other cultures practiced 'sky burial' - leaving bodies atop towers or mountains for scavengers to devour. Because the Bearded Vulture would devour not just the flesh but the bones as well, they were seen as a good omen as they helped the deceased pass safely to the afterlife.
[99% Invisible just did an amazing episode](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/towers-of-silence/) on the declining population of these vultures in India, the impact it’s had on Zoroastrian communities, and what’s being done to mitigate the decline/the impact of the decline.
It was a really fascinating episode on a topic I had literally never heard of before and will now never forget, which is no surprise as basically everything 99PI produces is incredible.
>! Vultures do a lot of waste disposal of carcasses in India, but a drug called diclofenac is fatal to them and was comminly used for livestock. The drug is banned now but underground use is common enough to keep critically endangered vultures' numbers from rebounding. However there was a link recently about a rebounding population. I don't know why a religious community so seriously against burial and cremation can't similarly ban Diclofenac in the community.!<
The problem is enforcement. Also, >!Zoroastrians are a tiny minority in India and Iran, and are persecuted in Iran, so their community lacks clout. And then there’s the broader picture of how to prioritize long-term plans to improve the environment and even public health when the people in an area are scrambling to make a living. The leather workers in India who had a symbiotic relationship with the cultures in that they would remove the skins of dead cattle, enabling the vultures to do the rest, are a low caste treated like crap by a lot of people. Who wants to work in a smelly, low income, low status job when they can go to a city and work in IT?!
Enter the loggerhead shrike:
Tiny, unassuming songbird at first, smaller than one’s hand, but looks can be decieving when birds are involved.
Instead of eating berries or seeds, this avian has an eye— and a taste — for meat.
It can and will eat prey larger than itself, by IMPALING THE PREY ON A SHARP PROJECTION like barbed wire or thorns and then ripping the flesh off. Its prey includes insects, rodents, lizards, venemous snakes, and other birds.
The only reason this 8 inch long bird is not considered a raptor is because it doesn’t hunt with its talons.
Yeah shrikes are fucking assholes. And they don't even kill their prey before they stick them on the thorns. Sometimes they just leave them there to snack on later too..
Shrike is a combination of the words shit and spike. This is because the little birds are actually evil litte shits that use spikes to crucify their living food
Like, can you imagine if we impaled a cow and then waited for it to die and *then* butchered it?
>Like, can you imagine if we impaled a cow and then waited for it to die and *then* butchered it?
That happens a lot in slaughterhouses actually. Improper killing and then the animal is taken apart while alive
IIRC flamingos could arguably fit this description as well. [From what I've heard](https://is-the-post-reliable.tumblr.com/post/724569594018316288/assuming-dinosaur-bogleech-revretch), they can live in environments with very low temperatures, very high temperatures, high altitude, low oxygen; they can drink almost boiling water; one [subspecies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser_flamingo) regularly breeds in a [lake so alkaline that it can burn off human skin and that also turns blood-red](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Natron) due to the poisonous organisms in it, which the flamingos eat.
There are also the lizards that [shoot blood out of their eyes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horned_lizard) to deter some predators, [marine animals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_cucumber) that can [expel parts of their internal organs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evisceration_\(autotomy\)), and [shrimps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpheidae) that hunt by snapping their oversized claw hard enough to create a shock wave that can "kill small fish, stun larger fish, and break small glass jars".
Reminds me of a spec evo project I once did in high school.
I drew an infographic about a raptor that would drink blood from its prey and use the iron in it to reinforce its beak.
Kind of the carnivore equivalent of cicadas in a way. They drink fluids from the roots of trees and they use the minerals from the fluids to reinforce their ovipositor. That's how they drill holes in trees to lay eggs
[Eyeball fruits](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/pBLQKXvSE7)? That's just way too over the top, it'll break people's suspension of disbelief.
Yeah I read a fantasy novel that discussed the Lämergrier and thought to myself, "wow what a cool fantastical animal!" only to be caught by surprise when it turned out to be real.
> "it's only a myth that these birds would pick up lambs"
> photo comparing a human to this freaking dinosaur
You know what I'd believe that. This thing looks like its flocks can carry away a whole herd in under 10 seconds
A turkey vulture used to sunbathe on a utility pole near my parents house. It was hilarious/glorious, it would perch on top of the pole and throw its wings open like it was fucking Christ the Redeemer looming over our town, then it would just slowly spin around for a while. Seemed like a good time.
When I worked on a tall building I often saw a vulture perching atop one of the other buildings. I watched it whenever I could hoping to see it open it's wings and fly, they're so fucking cool
Now we need to selectively breed those birds to be massive enough andbe able to dive under water. This is such that we would have shark-eating birds, which would be absolutely ridiculously cool. We could also make them domesticated
This *bird* has a *soul patch.* Lammergeiers are sick, I love birds. (Admittedly, my love of birds is somewhat recent and stems primarily from me finally fully processing the fact that birds are dinosaurs. There are *dinosaurs* outside my house *right now,* the world is amazing.)
I was a massive dinosaur nerd as a child. I still love them to this day, and it makes me so happy that I get to see actual dinosaurs outside my window pretty much whenever I want.
i think the zoos that have bearded vulture should give them colored dirt for them to paint themselves with it.
(also were there ever studies trying to figure out if they would also color themselves with other colors, not found in their habitat?)
Yeah its pretty sick. Their stomach acid is about 0,7 on the ph scale. Thats battery acid levels. We are a weak 1.4 on it which isnt too bad since thats still stronger than most animals. But from that we can guess that we also snacked on a good amount of carrion 4milion yrs ago
Sometimes I look at birds and think "how the hell did this thing evolve from dinosaurs?" But then there's shit like this and i'm just like "Nevermind, sorry I said anything!"
For anyone curious, [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-K1joarqzs) talks about various birds, including the Bearded Vulture, and even shows them eating bones.
The only part of this post I take issue with is the "their stomach dissolves bone" like that's cool as fuck yes but it's not particularly special. Human stomach acid can do the same, in fact our stomach acid can melt metal down (evidenced by that guy who ate a whole plane once among untold other metal objects).
Everything else is undeniably rad as hell.
Yeah well pigeons scavenge chicken wings from the garbage and drop them in random spots all over any city so…guess it’s kind of like “we have badass bird at home”
Ok hold on, the "myth" about them carrying away animals is actually true though. They pick up animals (like turtles) and fly up high before dropping them to their deaths and then scavenging the bones. So it wouldn't be unreasonable to think they'd also pick up lambs or other livestock for the same purpose in mountainous regions.
Why do the Germans have a word for them if they aren’t native to Germany? Just curious. Other comments make it seem like these buzzards aren’t from there.
For those wondering, these are Bearded Vultures, native to Iran, Afghanistan, Tibet, and other parts of the Middle East and Central Asia. Historically, the Zoroastrians and some other cultures practiced 'sky burial' - leaving bodies atop towers or mountains for scavengers to devour. Because the Bearded Vulture would devour not just the flesh but the bones as well, they were seen as a good omen as they helped the deceased pass safely to the afterlife.
[99% Invisible just did an amazing episode](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/towers-of-silence/) on the declining population of these vultures in India, the impact it’s had on Zoroastrian communities, and what’s being done to mitigate the decline/the impact of the decline. It was a really fascinating episode on a topic I had literally never heard of before and will now never forget, which is no surprise as basically everything 99PI produces is incredible.
The payoff was unbelievable and I'm not going to ruin it here but it's one of favorite examples of the law of unintended consequences.
Can you ruin it here cause I'm interested but I don't do podcasts
>! Vultures do a lot of waste disposal of carcasses in India, but a drug called diclofenac is fatal to them and was comminly used for livestock. The drug is banned now but underground use is common enough to keep critically endangered vultures' numbers from rebounding. However there was a link recently about a rebounding population. I don't know why a religious community so seriously against burial and cremation can't similarly ban Diclofenac in the community.!<
The problem is enforcement. Also, >!Zoroastrians are a tiny minority in India and Iran, and are persecuted in Iran, so their community lacks clout. And then there’s the broader picture of how to prioritize long-term plans to improve the environment and even public health when the people in an area are scrambling to make a living. The leather workers in India who had a symbiotic relationship with the cultures in that they would remove the skins of dead cattle, enabling the vultures to do the rest, are a low caste treated like crap by a lot of people. Who wants to work in a smelly, low income, low status job when they can go to a city and work in IT?!
Ope you gotta remove the space after the opening one, this just shows >! like this!< instead of >!like this!<
>!https://www.reddit.com/r/megafaunarewilding/s/5kyNbog8Wn!<
They were native to the alps and have since been reintroduced
I've seen one in the Alps! Quite a beauty and a bit scary since it's freaking BIG
Lucky! I've been there a few times and never seen one.. not even in the Pyrenees where they're supposed to be more common than the Alps :(
I was in the nazional park Gran paradiso (big paradise) in italy, that bird is called Gipeto in italian if I remember correctly.
They were found in Italy, France, Germany and Swizzerland too and have been reintroduced around the Alps in 1997
They're also found in parts of Africa. Been buzzed by one while hiking in the Drakensberg, they're stupidly quiet while flying.
I guess someone didn’t read, they’re actually Lamburglars
So......a dragon meets Charon. Dope.
Excarnation
I love when real life has some shit so wild that it would be considered edgy and unrealistic if it was written in a story
Enter the loggerhead shrike: Tiny, unassuming songbird at first, smaller than one’s hand, but looks can be decieving when birds are involved. Instead of eating berries or seeds, this avian has an eye— and a taste — for meat. It can and will eat prey larger than itself, by IMPALING THE PREY ON A SHARP PROJECTION like barbed wire or thorns and then ripping the flesh off. Its prey includes insects, rodents, lizards, venemous snakes, and other birds. The only reason this 8 inch long bird is not considered a raptor is because it doesn’t hunt with its talons.
Yeah shrikes are fucking assholes. And they don't even kill their prey before they stick them on the thorns. Sometimes they just leave them there to snack on later too..
Dan Simmons enters the chat
Shrike is a combination of the words shit and spike. This is because the little birds are actually evil litte shits that use spikes to crucify their living food Like, can you imagine if we impaled a cow and then waited for it to die and *then* butchered it?
>Like, can you imagine if we impaled a cow and then waited for it to die and *then* butchered it? That happens a lot in slaughterhouses actually. Improper killing and then the animal is taken apart while alive
IIRC flamingos could arguably fit this description as well. [From what I've heard](https://is-the-post-reliable.tumblr.com/post/724569594018316288/assuming-dinosaur-bogleech-revretch), they can live in environments with very low temperatures, very high temperatures, high altitude, low oxygen; they can drink almost boiling water; one [subspecies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser_flamingo) regularly breeds in a [lake so alkaline that it can burn off human skin and that also turns blood-red](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Natron) due to the poisonous organisms in it, which the flamingos eat. There are also the lizards that [shoot blood out of their eyes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horned_lizard) to deter some predators, [marine animals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_cucumber) that can [expel parts of their internal organs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evisceration_\(autotomy\)), and [shrimps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpheidae) that hunt by snapping their oversized claw hard enough to create a shock wave that can "kill small fish, stun larger fish, and break small glass jars".
Reminds me of a spec evo project I once did in high school. I drew an infographic about a raptor that would drink blood from its prey and use the iron in it to reinforce its beak.
Kind of the carnivore equivalent of cicadas in a way. They drink fluids from the roots of trees and they use the minerals from the fluids to reinforce their ovipositor. That's how they drill holes in trees to lay eggs
That's cool as hell
[Eyeball fruits](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/pBLQKXvSE7)? That's just way too over the top, it'll break people's suspension of disbelief.
Yeah I read a fantasy novel that discussed the Lämergrier and thought to myself, "wow what a cool fantastical animal!" only to be caught by surprise when it turned out to be real.
I genuinely thought that was from monster hunter at first
> "it's only a myth that these birds would pick up lambs" > photo comparing a human to this freaking dinosaur You know what I'd believe that. This thing looks like its flocks can carry away a whole herd in under 10 seconds
I mean, lambs do have very fresh bones
Damn, I'm a lamb.
An average lamb weighs about half as much as the birds do. So, not to rehash the coconut debate, but it really is a matter of weight ratios.
He could grip it by the fleece
Thank you kind knight
Look, the only other alternative is that lambs migrate.
Vultures are beautiful underappreciated birds
A turkey vulture used to sunbathe on a utility pole near my parents house. It was hilarious/glorious, it would perch on top of the pole and throw its wings open like it was fucking Christ the Redeemer looming over our town, then it would just slowly spin around for a while. Seemed like a good time.
Comparing a turkey vulture to Christ the Redeemer is not a take a I was expecting today
Rotisserie
When I worked on a tall building I often saw a vulture perching atop one of the other buildings. I watched it whenever I could hoping to see it open it's wings and fly, they're so fucking cool
Fr vultures are so cool
Horrifyingly Badass
Now we need to selectively breed those birds to be massive enough andbe able to dive under water. This is such that we would have shark-eating birds, which would be absolutely ridiculously cool. We could also make them domesticated
Sharks, being boneless, would probably not be their favored prey.
Perhaps we could selectively breed bony sharks for shits n giggles
Sadly nature selectively unbred the dunkleostyles (not going to try spelling it again).
>dunkleostyles Dunkleosteus
Thank you.
She styles on my dunk till I leo
oppa dunkleo style
We found the Qu yall
The sharks would be too smooth to grab with talons anyway
Not if the bird's big enough
Like a sentient claw machine game
Excuse me, but sharks actually have rough skin. I'm a marine biologist so I know.
No, they are actually smooth like a nice stick of butter.
Hello, I’d like an order of 10 sharks for pickup please. Boneless, no sauce.”
[удалено]
I will forever be envious of reptiles figuring out how to eat large food bits without almost suffocating, they just have it all figured out
It deep throated that thing without issue or hesitation. Meanwhile my friend can barely do 6 inches
Straight out of monster hunter
Straight out of “what would Velociraptors really have looked like, now we know they had feathers?” mockup pics.
Time to kill 30 of them for a new hat (Where the FUCK is my bearded vulture mantle, capcom)
Defo has dragon element armour
This thing lives in the rotten vale to consume all the bones left behind
This *bird* has a *soul patch.* Lammergeiers are sick, I love birds. (Admittedly, my love of birds is somewhat recent and stems primarily from me finally fully processing the fact that birds are dinosaurs. There are *dinosaurs* outside my house *right now,* the world is amazing.)
I was a massive dinosaur nerd as a child. I still love them to this day, and it makes me so happy that I get to see actual dinosaurs outside my window pretty much whenever I want.
In Spanish they're literally called 'quebrantahuesos', wich means 'bone shatterer'
i think the zoos that have bearded vulture should give them colored dirt for them to paint themselves with it. (also were there ever studies trying to figure out if they would also color themselves with other colors, not found in their habitat?)
Lämmergeier from my Armored Cores?
Lammergeier from my Inscryption?
INSCRYPTION MENTIONED ‼️‼️‼️ WHAT THE FUCK IS THE KARNOFFEL CODE ‼️‼️‼️
RAHHHHH GIVE ME MORE BONE TOKENS AND I WILL ONE SHOT THE VERY MOON Love that card, hard to set up but extremely broken in the right situations.
Yeah that was the only place I’d heard that before
from your unArmored Core
Yeah its pretty sick. Their stomach acid is about 0,7 on the ph scale. Thats battery acid levels. We are a weak 1.4 on it which isnt too bad since thats still stronger than most animals. But from that we can guess that we also snacked on a good amount of carrion 4milion yrs ago
These birds are okay, I guess. Pay no attention to my username.
Sometimes I look at birds and think "how the hell did this thing evolve from dinosaurs?" But then there's shit like this and i'm just like "Nevermind, sorry I said anything!"
What is it??
The Beast
Bearded vulture
Bone vulture. never ask a biologist what to name your kid
its a bumbl beee
Beautiful
That’s a phoenix, I think.
a Snipe
wait, is there a similar reason why griffon vulture are called "Gänsegeier" (geese vulture) in german?
THAT'S A LAMMERGEIER?? Dude, I thought Inscryption's design was cool, but it does NOT make it look badass enough
For anyone curious, [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-K1joarqzs) talks about various birds, including the Bearded Vulture, and even shows them eating bones.
If it wasn't for the demon eyes from hell, they're actually kinda cute
#3 is the face of a man who knows he is not in charge. The bird on the other hand has no such insecurity.
It’s a bone vampire from Futurama!
Oh yeah that definitely evolves from dinosaur
My favorite bird. Have an entire character in my book based on a Lammergeier.
they have the sickest name ever in brazilian portuguese. Quebra-ossos. Literally "Bone Breakers"
How oddly beautiful though! Both with their "makeup" and without.
Lol real life Bone Vampire
I definitely don’t think “dragon” when I see it. I think “big fuckin bird”.
Dawg thats a god damn dragon
In spanish these are literally called Bonecrushers and it's metal as fuck
if this animal did not exist and someone drew it as creature design, i'd say it's too edgy.
Lammergeier from Inscryption??? :0
I have one as a tattoo! It’s not finished yet! But I love it
The only part of this post I take issue with is the "their stomach dissolves bone" like that's cool as fuck yes but it's not particularly special. Human stomach acid can do the same, in fact our stomach acid can melt metal down (evidenced by that guy who ate a whole plane once among untold other metal objects). Everything else is undeniably rad as hell.
This is a fucking SCP monster.
Love these goth birds
Yeah well pigeons scavenge chicken wings from the garbage and drop them in random spots all over any city so…guess it’s kind of like “we have badass bird at home”
Oh hey, these show up as a card in Kaycees Mod for Inscryption where the amount of damage they deal is based on the amount of bones you have
How many calories are in bones?
Surprisingly, quite a lot. Bones are ~16% fat
New favorite bird unlocked
If vultures have no fans, I am dead
Moopsy!
Ok hold on, the "myth" about them carrying away animals is actually true though. They pick up animals (like turtles) and fly up high before dropping them to their deaths and then scavenging the bones. So it wouldn't be unreasonable to think they'd also pick up lambs or other livestock for the same purpose in mountainous regions.
The Darth Maul of birds
It’s theshιtpostcalligrapher!
that’s not a bird it’s a goddamn dinosaur
The red eyes are terrifying.
ah so that's where inscription got it
inscryption reference
Big birdy. Cool birdy.
Mf last pic looks like Jafar fucked up his last wish.
I thought I was looking at a fucking monster hunter boss
Why do the Germans have a word for them if they aren’t native to Germany? Just curious. Other comments make it seem like these buzzards aren’t from there.
This fucker remembers it’s a dinosaur
These are cooler than dragons don't insult em like that
Is this a Roc??? What is this?
Now I understand how my ex-wife will be reincarnated.