Vultures and their people in India: equity and entanglement in a time of extinctions. [Paper in: Unloved Others: Death of the Disregarded in the Time of Extinctions. Rose, Deborah Bird and van Dooren, Thom (eds)]

• Published in: Australian humanities review Vol. 50; no. 50; pp. 45 - 61
• Main Author: van Dooren, Thom
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bundoora Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) 01.05.2011
• Subjects: Animals; Birds; Collaboration; Endangered & extinct species; Endangered species; Food; Hinduism; Human body; India: Culture; Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs; Parsee communities; Pathogens; Poisoning; Religion; Scavenging birds; Society; Southeast Asia; India
• ISSN: 1325-8338; 1835-8063; 1325-8338
• DOI: 10.22459/AHR.50.2011.03

[...]Ruxton and Houston have even argued that it may have been in the development of the large body size and specialisations for efficient soaring flight that are so essential to being a successful avian scavenger, that vultures lost the flying accuracy, agility and manoeuvrability necessary to kill prey. The discovery that vultures were disappearing entered the scientific literature through the work of Vibhu Prakash of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) (Prakash). Since this time, the BNHS, in collaboration with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in the UK and the Zoological Society of London, has been conducting further research on the vulture decline. According to a 2004 study conducted by the Association for the Prevention and Control of Rabies in India (and sponsored by the United Nations' World Heath Organization), approximately 17 million people are bitten by dogs in India each year, or roughly one person every two seconds (APCRI 44). According to the British Medical Association's (BMA) guide to the disease: 'Once clinical symptoms of rabies appear, there is no known cure and the victim is virtually certain to die an agonizing and terrifying death' (BMA 13).