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What can vultures teach us about life, death, and waste?
Source: Kandukuru Nagarjun
Humanity's physical and metaphysical rift from nature has engendered a misunderstanding of our place in the cycle of regeneration. In the centuries-long process of distancing ourselves from this system, we may have lost hold of an important truth - we, too, are part of this cycle. This is a truth we are coming to realise as the mountains of waste deposited on lands across our world are coming to life and gaining agency of their own. The waste that was once thought to be isolated in hinterlands has made its way back into our rivers, seas, our cities and soils, and indeed, into our bodies and the bodies of those yet to be born.
Our waste problem is frequently framed as an issue of overconsumption, which it is. Over-active linear economies which treat end-of-life as a pesky, albeit easily disregarded, optional endeavour have much to answer when it comes to the mountains of waste we find ourselves immersed in. However, when we think of consumption it tends to be the human that ingests, hungrily and without thought, and yet it’s also true that everywhere we look in nature, symbiotic consumption can be found in abundance.
Although humans often occupy a destructive appetite in the chain of life, we can begin to shift this mindset by remembering that we can also be consumed by others in this lifecycle.
Nature, in its wisdom, functions on regenerative consumption cycles. Countless critters, mycelial networks, and microscopic beings have been engaged in a consumptive feast for billions of years, transforming life and death into rich, fertile soil that feeds the life force of all that dwells on earth. The death of a body, whether in a forest or city, invites a symphony of appetites to carry its life forward, to eat and for those critters to serve as food for others.
Double Death
Nowhere is this clearer than in the lives of vultures, the avian obligate scavengers whose appetites are predominantly fed by carcases - they almost never ‘hunt’ in a traditional sense. As death abounds in all ecosystems, these opportunistic birds have thrived for over 20 million years in the liminal spaces between life and death. Nowadays, vultures, such as the ones found in India in environmental philosopher, Thom van Dooren’s book Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction, can be found dwelling near slaughterhouses and dumps, or along the banks of rivers where they feast on the bodies of cattle, other animals, and even humans.
Death sustains vultures. They take what has already passed and turn it into nourishment. Yet, this is not just a one-way relation and there is more at play here than an opportunist feast for the vultures. For in parts of India, where cattle are bountiful but not always eaten by humans, the presence of millions of bovine carcasses yearly would pose a terminal risk to human and other animal populations. Vultures have adapted for millions of years to consume that which others could not, to time their services so perfectly that the development of diseases such as anthrax is prevented from entering the bodies of others.
However, vultures cannot digest everything. Vulture populations in India are quickly being decimated by the ingestion of Diclofenac, a drug given to humans and cattle more and more frequently to treat arthritis, musculoskeletal disorders, mastitis. In South Asia especially, when vultures feed off carcases that have ingested Diclofenac and other pain killers, they suffer from liver failure and die. As a result, up to 98% of India’s vultures have died.
When we think of extinction, we tend to conjure up a vast emptiness, akin to the barren world described in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, yet given the delicate balance our world rests on, the consequences of extinction are more explosive. The rapid decline of vultures in India is contributing to widespread dispersal of anthrax among animals and humans. Additionally, emerging scavengers such as wild dogs are stepping in to take their role, but not with the same dexterity, which means decomposition and contamination are still present. Bites from wild dogs are the predominant cause of rabies in humans which often has lethal consequences. Their rising population, caused by vulture decline, promises to drastically increase rabies and the deaths of humans and animals.
The Ancient Dance
The co-constitutive relations of vultures, cattle, dogs, and humans reveals in just a small fragment how entangled our lives are with others and how fragile this balance is. Yes, fast and drastic changes in our climates that come with shocking events threaten our position in this world, but the balance is so fragile that it can also be altered by the unintended consequences of something as benign remnants of medication in carcasses. Our lives are dependent on the countless threads that make us part of this multi-species community.
There are countless lives that bloom from the compost in our homes, the shedding of our skin, the fibres in our clothes.
Although humans often occupy a destructive appetite in the chain of life, we can begin to shift this mindset by remembering that we can also be consumed by others in this lifecycle. To think of ourselves as the ultimate consumers, even from a critical stance, is after all to reaffirm our superiority and dominance, to succumb to the centuries-old inheritance of anthropocentrism.
Source: Rod Waddington
Nourishment
And yet, we are also food and nourishment for others. There are countless lives that bloom from the compost in our homes, the shedding of our skin, the fibres in our clothes. Indeed, the millions of microbial beings that inhabit our bodies rely on our nourishment to live and sustain our living. When we think of ourselves as entangled with the non-human beings that we share our earth and bodies with, we can become positive agents in this web of life.
Instead of viewing waste as an inconvenience to be discarded, we can see it as a beginning for new life. Waste doesn't have to be the end of the road for resources; it can be the start of a new journey. Countless emerging human interventions are now actively involved in this process, considering waste as a beginning. From bioremediation processes that seek to take toxins and transform them into valuable resources to manufacturing processes that now begin with waste streams rather finite natural resources, the way we work with waste can be thought anew, from a perspective of potential transformation, rather than from the urgency of disposal.
Perhaps as waste becomes harder to ignore and the need to address the end-of-life for what we consume intensifies, we might start to reflect on the numerous endings that we are involved with. In doing so, we could appreciate the life that is sustained by our own endings. We might wonder what it would mean to live as if the conclusion of our existence mattered to others and presented opportunities for further thriving in the world.
Author: Marina Ionita | Editor: Dr Ehab Sayed
References
Carson R. Silent Spring. London: Penguin Books; 1962.
Thom Van Dooren. Flight Ways Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction. Columbia University Press; 2014.
Sayed E. Human Logic: Unlearning Anthropocentric Thinking [Internet]. Biohm. 2024 [cited 2024 Sep 17]. Available from: https://www.biohm.co.uk/post/human-logic-unlearning-anthropocentric-thinking
The SoIB Partnership. State of India’s Birds, 2023: Range, trends, and conservation status [Internet]. https://zenodo.org/. India: The SoIB Partnership; 2023 [cited 2024 Sep 17] p. 40. Available from: https://zenodo.org/records/11124590/preview/00_SoIB%202023.pdf
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