scavenger survival | 2016-08-17
picture the rolling plains of the serengeti — a herd of wildebeest trundle along, munching all the grass you could possibly imagine. suddenly, a sawt of female lions breaks into the side of the herd, sending the entire implausibility into a frenzy, young and strong leaving old and frail behind in an effort to save themselves. as sure as time, one poor wildebeest is caught by the sawt and, amidst terror and tearing, shuffles off this mortal coil — the souse will have enough food for another few weeks.
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| gotcha |
but these are lions — they aren’t called a pride for nothing. the big male leader (presumably mufasa or simba) will take the first and best meat, then the females (who actually did all the work and aren’t getting any cred… poor nala) get to have at the next best meat, then the little lions get to scrounge around for the leftovers, usually fighting off hyenas for what remains.
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| much laughter ensues |
once the lions move on to the next hunt, the wildebeest remains and is likely to be dragged off by some hyenas who will gladly eat the leftover hotdog-type meats which remain. then, in desperation, other, weaker hyenas and similar scavengers (think wild dogs) will come in for some eats.
finally, the buzzards get to move in and they start eating what’s left over including, in the case of the bearded vulture, the bones.
at this point, of course, the carcass has already been lying around in the hot serengeti sun for a long while and it is also being eaten by bugs and by microbes and bacteria. and these microbes, while they are eating, produce toxins like anthrax and botulinum (the most deadly of toxins). in short, this is some really nasty, funktified food.
so, the lions are eating some fairly fresh meat and the first hyenas aren’t doing too badly but how do the rest of these animals survive? by most biological standards, those toxins can and should kill any mammal. in fact, many mammals are observed to pass over the carcasses of animals that have died from disease in favour of those killed by accidents or attacks or age — they can sense the yuck and they avoid it! but not the buzzards and not the desperate hyenas — they yummy down on it. how? why?
the ‘why’ is slightly easier to answer: on the serengeti, you can’t afford to be too picky and, when you’re not a big lion, you have to wait to eat the big prey. so, hyenas, if forced to, will eat rotten meat simply because they are forced to (they prefer fresh meat, like lions do, but they can’t always make that happen). and the same more or less goes for the buzzards — they can’t take down a wildebeest and they can’t scare off a lion or a hyena so they have to wait until no one else wants the carcass before they can eat it.
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| vulture and marabou stork (a.k.a. undertaker stork) |
but, still, how?
well… scienceticians aren’t sure…
the best they can come up with is two things:
- the proof in the stomach acids of buzzards, in particular… the acid in a bearded vulture’s stomach is so strong that it can dissolve a bone within 24 hours!
- magical levels of immunity
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| bearded vulture |
the problem with the immunity piece is that immunity isn’t something creatures are really born with — it takes small doses over periods of time to build of the required antibodies. we humans deal with immunity that way via immunizations/vaccines. obviously, there aren’t buzzard physicians sticking needles in baby buzzards…
however, immunity does work in a few other ways:
1. group immunity
if a hyena mom eats something really infested with yuck but then goes home and ‘cleans’ her kids, they get a small dose of yuck. and then they wrestle with each other and pass the yuck back and forth until, eventually, they are all used to some level of yuck and can ramp up to small chunks of meat with yuck… and so on…
2. what i like to call immunity by osmosis
just like people get used to the smell of blue cheese (which contains the exact same bacteria as smelly feet — Brevibacterium linens) and, then, think that it’s a good thing to eat and, further, moms who eat and like blue cheese somehow pass on the desire to eat the smelly substance to their in utero children (frealz… that happens) and, just like humans have come to insist that rotten dairy, rotten cocoa, rotten grapes, rotten wheat/barley, and rotten meat (e.g. salami/prosciutto) is all very tasty and is good for us, so, too, do scavengers start to develop keener senses for what can kill them and what can’t…
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| delicious |
there are many different types of bacteria and many of them are harmless to us and to other mammals. with the right balance of antibodies and the right additional ingredients, we can promote the success of certain bacteria over others (i.e. adding salt to meat so that good, salt-hungry bacteria grow and take over the place while bad, salt-hating bacteria die, eventually creating salami or jerky or whatever). perhaps scavengers have developed antibodies along with certain ‘ingredients’ (saliva? magic dust?) to minimize the success of anthrax and botulinum?
who knows?
so far on scavenger survival
