*wings!

Adding video to channels (Wings) - requested by kulpims.

Do they then bury the bones? Maybe that was what was in the basket. Sad, but very interesting.

In parts of India where Zoroastrianism is still practised they "bury" their dead in a similar manner. They believe a corpse is corrupted by a demon and is thus made unclean. Burial means poisoning the ground with this corruption, and cremation means poisoning of the air so they dispose of their dead with the help of vultures. They leave their dead on a flat roof of a building called a Tower of Silence. The vultures take everything but the bones, the bones are left to be bleached by the Sun and gradually disintergrate after which they are washed out through coal and sand filters to the sea.

I quite like this religious tradition because it kind of makes sense ecologically. Vultures are incredibly important in the ecosystem and it seems strange that this bird has a reputation for being dirty or unclean when it is them that helps prevent the landscape from being covered in putrefying corpses. In the 90s vulture populations nosedived due to a drug used on cattle finding its way along the food chain. Something like a 99.5% population decrease. Sadly this burial tradtional pretty much went with them. Where previously corpses were stripped in a matter of minutes they now sat and rotted. Animal corpses also literally piled up, scavenging stray dog population exploded which had knock on problems, even shit like an increase in Tiger attacks (Tigers would venture into populated areas to hunt the Dogs).

Long story short I'd much rather have my body picked over by vultures than rot in a coffin or get turned into polluting gas. You know, assuming my organs weren't good for anything else.

Neil Gaiman wrote about this in one of his Sandman comics... a student from a necropolis went on a "field trip" to participate in this rare ritual done where burying and burning are out of the question. In the comic the bones of the interred were ground up in a mortar and mixed with blood and corn meal as the last step,then the attendants would sit around and have a small meal and trade stories with the gore still on their hands as a sign of respect to the departed.

"Or we can throw you to the vultures who will tear up your corpse-Gobble Gobble Gobble,which will be a bit of a shock if she's not quite dead!"

In answer to what happens to the bones...
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.liveleak.com/ll_embed?f=569f78602bc0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

euw I have no idea about HTML tags or what not basically the Lammergier eats the bones please see http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fcf_1284843740