Lead
A local poor man in Myanmar rummaged through the garbage when a huge black bird appeared in front of him, but then the poor people ducked away and no one did anything.
Why don't the poor people in the dump dare eat these birds?
And how did these birds end up in the dump?
After all, the environment in the garbage dump is very bad for both humans and animals, and there can't be any creatures that can thrive in the garbage dump, right?
India's garbage mountains raise a huge "vulture stork".
India is one of the world's largest garbage disposal countries, and at the same time, India's garbage dumps are home to a large number of poor people, who can find food to eat in the garbage dumps, take them home to eat or live in tents directly on the spot, and live by living from the garbage.
It can be said that India's garbage dump is a special "city" composed of garbage, and the poor live in this garbage "city", although the quality of life is far less than that of the wealthy, but it is not without hope, and it is precisely because of hope that these poor people will always rely on the food they encounter in the garbage dump to struggle.
These poor people living in the garbage dump are called "low castes" in India because their social status is very low, far inferior to the "high castes" who have high status in India society, so they are always oppressed by the high castes and can only live a hungry life.
Among the animals that choose to live on garbage like these poor people is a very special giant scavenging bird, which is much taller than a human and extremely large, and is a distant relative of the pelican, the "bald stork".
Like these poor people, they struggle to survive in India's garbage dumps.
The storks living in the garbage dump use the garbage as their own foraging field, and they do not use the dirt of the garbage as their own obstacle, but like to live in the garbage very much, because they come to eat the garbage.
At first, the poor people at the dump were very concerned about the storks, thinking that if the storks ate up the garbage, they would not be able to survive.
However, when they found out that they were not afraid of the stork, they realized that although the stork eats garbage, it is not a rare food.
Vulture storks do not eat fresh food because fresh food is perishable and can cause disease in the garbage dump, vultures only eat food that has rotted and even moldy, because such food does not cause disease and does no harm to the body of the vulture stork.
In addition, the feathers on the stork's body are very solid and have good protection ability, so the smell of decay emitted from the garbage has no effect on the stork, and they are able to cope with it very well.
As a result, the vultures and the poor people in the garbage dump gradually formed a symbiotic relationship of distance, and the two did not worry that the other would steal the food, and then began to live in harmony.
But as time goes by, the more frequent the storks become, why?
It's not because there's more food in the dump, it's because the storks have found a good place to nest here.
The reason why the poor are afraid to eat.
The number of vulture storks living in the garbage dumps has become more and more numerous, and India people find it strange that they are the result of the concentration of vultures in different places, so they began to explore the true number and distribution map of the vultures.
However, with the deepening of the investigation, India was surprised to find that this is not a vulture stork, it turns out that only half of the vulture storks in India are real, the remaining half are fake, people did not expect that vultures are distributed frequently in India to even know whether they are true or false.
However, it was also quickly found that the reason for the large number of vulture storks in the garbage dump was that these were not the storks courting, but that in the process of overcoming each other, the storks would spread their wings and use the grooves in the middle of the wings to defeat the opposite sex.
In the garbage dump, the vultures are like this, several male vulture storks wave their wings in order to fight for the female vultures, but it is a luxury to have such space in the garbage dump, so the vulture storks find tall trees in the garbage dump by themselves, and after forming a flock, they begin to compete with each other, and the poor people can get closer to the vulture storks in the process, which can be said to be very convenient.
Although the vultures in the garbage dump and the poor people have formed a relationship of either natural enemies or relatives, the poor people have never dared to eat the vultures, not because they are afraid that eating the vultures will cause the vultures to do something to them, but because of the following reasons.
First of all, India is a religious country, not only people should respect all things, animals should also respect all things, so if animals can not eat, do not eat, even if they eat, they must be handled very carefully and not carelessly.
Therefore, some poor people in India believe that people should respect Buddhism, let others live and let themselves live, and people are also messengers of God and cannot act contrary to the teachings, so everyone does not dare to eat vultures.
On the other hand, the poor are worried that the vulture stork will have parasites, after all, the vulture stork is a scavenging bird and does not like fresh food, but the side effect of scavenging is that it may cause parasites, and the parasites can cause diseases, which is very fatal to the poor people who are already in the garbage dump with serious health problems.
The great disease brought to people can cause direct death, so the poor people are very rational and do not dare to eat the vulture stork in this environment, lest they die of illness due to curiosity.
Finally, there are some poor people who dare not eat vulture storks in order to abide by the law, and the local government needs to manage the behavior of the people, but the poor are low castes after all, people who have no money, and people who cannot have enough food, so the poor can not find trouble without looking for trouble, and dare not eat.
How do vulture storks survive?
So, how exactly do vulture storks survive in the garbage dump?
One might say how a scavenging bird could survive a garbage dump.
However, it is not that the storks do not have the ability to survive in the garbage dump, on the contrary, they have better living conditions in the garbage dump than other environments.
First, as scavenging birds, vulture storks are carnivorous animals, and the cells in their bodies make an enzyme called oxidase, which converts foods such as protein into energy.
If the stork eats fresh, rotten food, then the energy in this food will be converted into the energy of the stork's survival, allowing the stork to stay alive, and if the food eaten is not oxidized, then it will be broken down by the stork's body and excreted from the body.
Therefore, scavenging food is very important for vultures, and the food in the garbage is scavenging food.
In addition to this reason, there is another important reason for vulture storks to thrive in dumps: nesting.
Giant birds are very demanding and demanding when it comes to breeding nests.
They chose a place where there could be no nests for other birds, so the storks especially preferred tall trees, because the location on the trees was now the best village without the woods, without the interference of other birds.
This way the storks don't have to worry about their own shelter, and the next step is to build their nests with their own hands, and the storks usually choose tall trees that grow on the edge of the sea, so that other animals, especially humans, will not come to disturb them.
Because there is an abundance of food in the sea, vultures are scavenging birds and can find enough food to make it a natural thing for them to live.
And such nests are built very carefully, and scientists are more and more admiring the wisdom of giant birds.
The top of the giant bird is very spacious, with plenty of living space, and due to the lack of moisture that can lead to air circulation, it is very dry inside, which can protect the giant birds very well, and even humans have no way to build a nest compared to them.
This kind of accommodation environment of giant birds, the top is spacious, the inside is dry, can cope with the rain well, has a good rain shelter function, and at the same time can protect the giant birds is very safe, their small nest is very suitable for their own life, which is why the giant birds like this kind of forest very much.
The structure of their nests is really good, but the next generation of giant birds that live in them is also very interesting.
As we all know, birds are oviparous, in general, a pair of birds build a nest, and then hatch in the nest, when its little bird grows up, it leaves the nest, begins to learn to fly, after mastering the skills of flying, and then leaves its parents and lives an independent life on its own.
However, this is not the case with giant birds, the nests of birds we are talking about now are built by a pair of birds, and the nests of giant birds are built by a group of giant birds, which is a special characteristic of giant birds.
This way of life of the giant birds, like the poor, is the result of the natural environment
The poor people would find a good place to live in the garbage dump, build a dwelling, and then each family would set up a tent in their own home, and each family would form a shelter area.
In the reasonable distribution of the residential area, there will never be a crowded family, no people are lively, and there will be no family has nowhere to stand and no place to hide from the wind and rain.
Therefore, this is a very normal phenomenon among the poor, and it has become a habit of their life unconsciously.
The methods of preventing ant infestation are similar, with the poor burning some waste in a jar as a smoke bomb to keep the ants escaping, while the giant birds pile up a pile of horse manure on the edge of the nest to keep the ants away through the smoke.
epilogue
There are many similarities between humans and animals, and through these similarities, we can see the characteristics of human existence, and we can also see the amazing wisdom of animals.