Sometimes I feel like the guy in the old cartoon, who is holding up a sign that says, The end is near!
Birds that once feasted on misfortune are collapsing — part of a broader decline in vultures that illustrates the far-reaching effects of human interventions.
nytimes.com|By MARC SANTORA
It is tempting to feel an aversion to vultures as yucky carrion feeders until I pause to imagine what the world would be like without them. Critters like vultures and their comrades in the insect and microbe realms are a community of death-eaters keeping the world spic-and-span for we species who would rather not dine on carrion, unless, of course, we have killed critters ourselves.
We prefer to avoid contracting diseases from random carrion, not have to smell/step-in/live with dead bodies all over the place. Thanks to vultures and other death-eaters, this is possible, for now. Long live the vultures! Or we are in deep trouble.
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