Science: Vulture’s “gut designed to kill off the bacteria” –
Ramtha on the effects of “Vulture Grease”
“Model (microbial) citizens.” (Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)
– “How vultures evolved to live on rotting, feces-covered meat (and what we can learn from them)”
“Have you thanked a vulture today? It turns out that they’re getting rid of an awful lot of dangerous bacteria for us. According to new research published Tuesday [November 25] in Nature Communications, the vulture has a gut designed to kill off the bacteria that thrive on the carrion they crave. When they chow down, they remove the dangerous microbes from the ecosystem — and if we can learn more about how the vultures manage this feat, we might be able to harness their skills in our own fights against bacterial infections.
In the past few years, new technology has helped to unlock the secrets of the microbiome — the bacterial communities that thrive around, on, and in all of us. But little has been done to investigate the bird microbiome.
‘If you’re going to study any kind of bird’s microbiome, we figured, vultures would be a great place to start,’ said study co-author Gary Graves, the curator of birds for the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.” by Rachel Feltman, Washington Post.
Read more
– Ramtha on the effects of “Vulture Grease” in his lifetime after being run through with a sword
“I would never forget the voice that made me stand up, that kept me from dying. In the years to come I would seek to find the face of that voice.
I was given to the court of women in my march to be cared for. And I had to endure the stinking poultices of vulture grease that were put upon my chest. I had to be bossed by the women and undressed before their eyes. I could not even urinate or spill dung from my anus in private but had to do it in front of them, a most humiliating experience. I have acclaimed even to this day that the vulture grease was not to heal me but was so wretched that when I breathed it, it kept life in me. During my healing, much of my pride and hate had to give way to survival.
While I was recovering from my ghastly wound and couldn’t do anything else, I began to contemplate everything around me.”
– Ramtha
The White Book, excerpt from Chapter 2.