Vultures Just Keep Giving: Here’s How They Can Help Solve Crime

Hey, welcome back to Will That's Interesting, the You There Boy, What Day Is It? Why it's Christmas Day edition. That was a Charles Dickens reference. And today is a bonus.

Vultures just keep giving. Here's how they can help solve crime. my friends. Set fire to all the other gifts waiting for you under whatever spot has been designated for gifts. You're not going to need them or want them. And that's because

I have the perfect gift for you. Especially if you fancy true crime, anatomy, biology, or mythology, animals in general, and or weird facts that are probably not suitable to bring up at every occasion. As you could tell by the title of today's show, we We are revisiting vultures.

Just two weeks ago, during episode 260, multi-generational vulture-ness hold nearly 700 years of human artifacts and the world's oldest forests have been found, we learned about the bearded vulture. A no fucking nonsense, non-traditionalist, anti-conformist whose unblinking stare can

dig a hole through your skull, after which they feast upon your bones. And they happen to be exceptional homemakers. That is exactly how I describe them at the time, and if you haven't had a listen, you really should.

These birds, found along the highest mountains on earth, build their homes with all sorts of debris, including what humans leave behind. And when you have a creature with a wingspan of up to nine feet, combined with the unusual behavior of passing down a nest from generation to generation, what you have is a huge

anthropological treasure chest. that could hold 700 year old shoes. And that's pretty cool. Today, a different species of vulture in a very different part of the world is also helping us. Though in a very different way. It is my honor to share a TED Talk featuring forensic anthropologist Lauren Farr, who in

the next 11 minutes will take us on a journey featuring Louisiana's turkey vulture. And And that journey begins with an email she receives from a detective looking for a missing person. We will learn quite a bit about the turkey vulture, including how their circling isn't

what we should be looking for, but how they strip their meals, and how quickly they do it. All of this can actually provide an accurate time frame in a forensic investigation, just the way the life cycle of bugs or the level of a decay can in certain environments.

But here's the twist. scavenge behavior isn't typically considered during investigations. And Lauren wants to change that. In this talk, she proves just how important vultures can be by telling us about the time she actually helped solve a case. I think we should have a listen. From

the 2017 TED Talk, How Vultures Can Help Solve Crimes, here's forensic anthropologist Lauren Farr. My parents always wanted me to be a doctor. But a doctor that studies how vultures eat dead things is probably not the type of doctor

my parents had in mind. I study vultures scavenging behavior and how vultures affect crime scenes. I'm here to talk to you about how we take vultures for granted in forensic science. Before we do that, I want to tell you a story.

So we're going to take a trip. Oh, 1000 of us. It's May 2014, and we're standing in a park in Nashville, Tennessee, because we've been at a horse race.

As we wait for the porta potty, we see two ladies and their Sunday best, heels, pearls and lovely floppy derby hats. At any moment we expect them to start talking about their grandmas find China, but they don't.

Instead, we hear them say, oh look, something must be dead. We look up and to the left and see vultures circling round and round. It occurred to me at this very moment that these ladies at the Derby are aware of vultures' connection to death.

Then why aren't we talking more about these birds at crime scenes? People know that vultures are connected to death But they don't really understand how For example, here's an email I received from a detective in Louisiana

Lauren there's been a kidnapping What buzzards or vultures do we have in Louisiana? Before we address the kidnapping, I'll first address this buzzard vulture question I get all the time.

Buzzards don't live in the United States. They are hawks that live in Europe. The big black birds you see circling in the sky within the US are vultures. The two types of vultures that live in Louisiana are the turkey vulture and black vulture.

To fully understand the role of vultures in forensic science, I'll walk you through this forensic case. When the email, certain things become apparent. We can assume the detective thinks the individual is dead, and he wants to use the birds to

try to find the body. Like the ladies in Nashville, the detective thinks that vultures circling in the sky will lead him to the body. It's not that simple.

I don't know if you've ever seen a vulture up close or spent much time with them, but they're huge. Huge. six-foot wingspan.

Vultures circle in the air because they are too big to flap their wings and fly so they soar. They soar in thermals which are vortexes

or little tornadoes caused by pressure differences in the air that form throughout the day as the sun heats up the ground. Therefore, when you see a circling vulture,

the bird is usually traveling from point A to B rather than circling above something dead. Actually, if you want to use a vulture to try to find a body, look for a vulture in a tree or on a fence post.

Vultures are too big and slow to hunt, so they have to scavenge. In fact, vultures are the only animals in the world that depend upon death as a food source.

The turkey vulture that you see here is super cool because it's one of the few bird species that can actually smell. It hones in on the disease by sensing a chemical

is coming off the body during decay. The evolutionary role of the vulture is to rid the earth of harmful toxins produced following death. Once death has been detected, the turkey vulture lands and quickly scavenges. Vultures usually remove the eyes first, then tear the skin. Start pulling the tissues and leave

you with a skeleton. Therefore the importance of vultures is not in the