Are scavengers edible?

[MRC_Hans]

I hope someone knows about savanna wildlife.

You often, in TV features about wildlife see predators having to ward off scavengers from their catch. Generally, they just growl and slash at them.

Today I saw a feature about a cheetah mother struggling to feed a litter of six (!) cubs. While they were eating she chased away the gathering vultures.

I started to wonder why she didn't kill a few of them. Pretty free food as they walked (well, lurched) right up close. A vulture looks big, but it it only weighs some three kg. So the 15 times heavier cheetah should have no trouble killing it, even if it has a sharp beak.

Do vultures taste very bad or something?

Hans

 

[novaphile]

Not speaking from personal experience, but I've heard that a lot of birds taste really bad. (Swan, penguin, puffin, parrots)

Also birds really fight dirty (watch your eyes). I've copped a few pecks from my chickens, and there's no way I'd pick a fight with a vulture.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm sure she'd eat them but I'm guessing the cheetah knows from experience it is a waste of energy to try to catch one.

 

[Giordano]

Not speaking from personal experience, but I've heard that a lot of birds taste really bad. (Swan, penguin, puffin, parrots)

Also birds really fight dirty (watch your eyes). I've copped a few pecks from my chickens, and there's no way I'd pick a fight with a vulture.

Isn't smoked puffin a delicacy in Iceland? Of course not all "delicacies" actually taste good.

 

[fagin]

And only the queen can eat swans over here.

 

[Hans]

penguin.

Eventually, penguins began flocking to the ship and the birds were—Cook wrote—“of equal interest to the naturalist and the cook.” He began eating penguins. They taste like “a piece of beef, odiferous cod fish and a canvas-backed duck roasted together in a pot, with blood and cod-liver oil for sauce”—but eventually he convinced the crew’s leader to make everyone eat penguin. Remember, Cook was a physician and was essentially prescribing this fresh meat as medicine.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts...ind-of-dinner-bell-in-the-antarctic-22002918/

 

[MRC_Hans]

Not speaking from personal experience, but I've heard that a lot of birds taste really bad. (Swan, penguin, puffin, parrots)

Also birds really fight dirty (watch your eyes). I've copped a few pecks from my chickens, and there's no way I'd pick a fight with a vulture.

I wouldn't pick a fight, I'd kick the daylights right out of it.

Hans

 

[MRC_Hans]

I'm sure she'd eat them but I'm guessing the cheetah knows from experience it is a waste of energy to try to catch one.

A cheetah is the fastest land animal on the planet. I'm sure it can jump a vulture. They are rather slow when on the ground.

Hans

 

[Varanid]

A cheetah is the fastest land animal on the planet. I'm sure it can jump a vulture. They are rather slow when on the ground.

Hans

Often, the perspective on wildlife documentaries is misleading. The vultures were likely hanging out beyond the cheetah's reasonable reach.

I don't understand optics/photography well, but I think that if you use a really long zoom lens, you lose depth of field.

 

[fagin]

I haven't ever seen scavengers actually attacked, just chased, whether vultures, hyenas or whatever (and lions are much bigger than hyenas.)

Perhaps the instinct is to protect the kill they have, and not line up more.

A bit of a chase would also allow the other scavengers to get in and munch.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Could be a point

 

[casebro]

Lobsters sure are.

 

[Oystein]

I read that the liver of meat eaters is a pretty poisonous thing, as it stores all kinds of stuff at the end of the food chain. Specifically vitamin-A poisoning can make you painfully and mortally ill - as I recall, there was once a polar expedition that learned this the hard way after they ate their dog's livers.

Not sure if perhaps similarly the muscle meat or fat of scavengers is high on contaminants.

 

[Andy_Ross]

And only the queen can eat swans over here.

Not true, She can eat her swans. Some swans are 'owned' by the London Livery Companies, they can serve them. there is a ceremony every year on the Thames where they catch swans and mark them with their ownership.
I think Swan is served in some of the Oxford Colleges as well at High Table.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

A cheetah is the fastest land animal on the planet. I'm sure it can jump a vulture. They are rather slow when on the ground.

Hans

I dunno, evolution and all, they are often feeding on the same carcass large predators are eating on. I imagine they know how to stay just far enough away to avoid a swipe.

 

[Andy_Ross]

I like a Crab

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

...

Perhaps the instinct is to protect the kill they have, and not line up more.

A bit of a chase would also allow the other scavengers to get in and munch.

These are good points. Bird in the hand plus experience chasing and never catching the ever moving competition around the kill.

 

[Ron Swanson]

Isn't smoked puffin a delicacy in Iceland? Of course not all "delicacies" actually taste good.

Icelandic delicacies include popping open a can of surströmming in brine too though

 

[Andy_Ross]

A cheetah is the fastest land animal on the planet. I'm sure it can jump a vulture. They are rather slow when on the ground.

Hans

A Bantam Cock can

It was a grand upstanding bantam cock,
So brisk and stiff and spry,
With springy step and jaunty plume
And a purposeful look in his eye,
In his little black blinking eye, he had.

I took him to the coop and introduced him
To my seventeen wide-eyed hens.
He tupped and he tupped as a hero tups
And he bowed from the waist to them all, and then
He upped and he tupped 'em all again, he did.

And then upon the peace of me ducks and me geese
He rudely did intrude.
With glazed eyes and open mouths
They bore it all with fortitude
And a little bit of gratitude, they did.

He jumped my giggling guinea fowl
And forced his attentions upon
My twenty hysterical turkeys and
A visiting migrant swan.
But the bantam thundered on, he did.

He ravished my fan-tailed pigeons and
Me lily-white columbines,
And while I was locking up the budgerigar
He jumped my parrot from behind;
She was sitting on me shoulder at the time.

And all of a sudden with a gasp and a gulp
He clapped his hands to his head,
Fell flat on his back with his toes in the air.
My bantam cock lay dead
And the vultures circled overhead, they did.

What a champion brute; what a noble cock;
What a way to live and to die.
I was digging him a grave to save his bones
From the hungry buzzards in the sky
When the bantam opened up a sly little eye.

He gave me a grin and a terrible wink,
The way that rapists do.
He said, "You see them big daft buggers up there?
They'll be down in a minute or two;
They'll be down in a minute or two".

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

A cheetah is relatively light, and vultures are relatively big. If you've seen videos of things like eagles attacking goats, you'll know that being in a fight with a predatory bird is no joke. I would have thought the cheetah would only try it as a last resort, especially as the vulture can fly and therefore catching it would require a great deal of effort.