A diet to die for

VULTURES are not exactly picky eaters. The carcasses on which they dine swiftly decompose, broken down by micro-organisms that excrete a range of nasty toxins. This makes decaying flesh a perilous source of food for most animals. Vultures, by contrast, either wait until their chosen corpse has decayed enough for them to peck through its often tough skin, or find a quicker way in via natural orifices. They frequently choose the fast-food route, inserting their head deep into the anus of large decomposing animals and exposing themselves to a mass of faeces-borne pathogens. Far from haute cuisine, then.

Just how far is described by the first-ever genomic analysis of the micro-organisms found on and in the facial skin and large intestine of vultures, published this week in Nature Communications. Warning: this is not lunchtime reading.