News in Brief Animals

Vulture guts are filled with noxious bacteria

Punishing conditions in intestines knock out most microbes

Vulture eating roadkill

Vultures are exposed to hazardous bacteria when they scavenge, but they don’t get ill and may even benefit from the microbes.

G.R. Graves 

By Kate Baggaley

- More than 2 years ago

Vultures’ guts are full of microbes that sicken other creatures, a new study finds. Conditions in the birds’ intestines are so harsh that most other bacteria that pass through them get destroyed.