The way everyone is writing this off as so obvious is annoying. Have you guys never found a bug that in retrospect was glaringly obvious, but all the symptoms looked bizarre until you found what made them all connected? This is a fun story the same way the "500 mile email limit" story is a fun story. Yeah the idea of "your timeout is so low that it times out unless you're sending a very local request, about 500 miles" is obvious and somewhat boring in retrospect too, but that twist is what makes them both fun stories/facts.
I actually find the story very interesting. I'm curious about one things: do vultures actually learn the geography, presumably from each other and not direct experience? Or are they following concentration of some carrion-related volatiles - i.e. turning around where the air stops smelling tasty? I know next to nothing about these birds, but I'd find the latter more plausible than the former.
Actually, this reminded me about the impact pesticides etc. have had on Parsi death rights in India. Parsi people rely on birds of prey to consume their dead bodies in Dakhma's (structures intended for dead bodies to be exposed to birds that consume carrion). Due to the destruction of the population it's basically become much more difficult.
I understand your sentiment, but this plot twist was much less clever than the 500 mile email issue. My immediate thought was this was due to geography (natural or man-made) or laws/regulations that protect their habitat or food sources.
There is a word/name for that phenomenon though it escapes me right now. That said, in this case I think many/most people assumed the correct answer (or something close to it) prior to the grand reveal.
"Manuel Aguilera wants you to know there’s no reason to fear vultures. The ornithological guide has gone as far as climbing into an animal carcass to get closer to the birds of prey. He’s spent 40 years studying the griffon vulture, and has dedicated his career to changing peoples’ perceptions of the birds, hoping to have others realize that they are majestic creatures to revere and protect."
Knowing they are scavengers I would not be afraid of them, by the time they bother you you will be dead. They won't attack anyone who has any way to defend themselves.
I have seen elk wander back and forth across an invisible boundary all year, but the first day of hunting season you can bet they will not put one hoof into the game unit.
As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, the behavior has nothing to do with knowing a border but rather something important to vultures: lack of carrion on the other side because people on the other side observe different laws pertaining to animal disposal.
I wonder if, given enough distance, this is actually a really good way to avoid deceases.
Burying or burning is a good "rite" or meme, that will avoid many deceases. In the way that it favours cultures who dispose of their dead this way, have a benefit over those who leave them "lying around", so to say.
Would a sky-burial work similar? Or does that simply spread the risk of contamination over a large area that it only helps cultures in really sparse areas?
I think the funniest part of this story is how much Portugal spends on the corpse removal & burning. The vultures do the job for free!
Another example of this is in The Biggest Little Farm. The farmers have a problem with gophers. The "traditional" ways of handling gophers are all very expensive or have bad side effects. They figure out that if they attract owls to their farm by building owl houses, the owls take care of the gophers.
Both of those are good examples of letting nature work for you, rather than you trying to work against nature. For humans to have a sustainable future for tens of thousands of more years, I think we need to figure out how to work side-by-side with nature rather than try to bend nature to our will.
I think there is some historic background here as well.
You had brucellosis scares in Portugal with a lot of media coverage, which lead to quite a few human brucellosis cases and several sheep and goats exterminated in containment measures.
I have no evidence that these are related but the corpse collection could be an over the top measure by the regulatory authorities to stop brucellosis disease vectors.
It reminds me of an article posted on HN a while back [0] about how zebra mussels have helped clean up Lake Erie. It's written by a modern druid, who laments that humans so often avoid the ecological solutions mother nature has provided us.
From the thread: "Representatives of BirdLife International, a nature conservation partnership, in both countries argue wildlife will benefit from the integration of sanitary policies across European borders."
...but I was thinking the exact opposite. Because at least they didn't have BOTH countries doing this, the vulture population can survive in decent numbers on the Spanish side, and whenever Portugal comes around the vultures will figure it out and come back. But, if Spain and Portugal had both, for years, reduced the supply of food available to vultures, the population would have either died off or had to move much further away.
Sometimes, avoiding a big mistake everywhere is more important than avoiding a big mistake anywhere.
"The vultures of Spain skirt around the Portuguese border with uncanny accuracy" is a stunningly dishonest way to report this. Based on the pictures supposedly supporting this headline, which open the thread... if you had the vulture data and didn't know where the borders were, you would be totally unable to guess where the borders were.
Rather, most of Portugal is included within a larger region where vultures mostly don't go, because they can't find food there.
> Maybe there are too many vultures in Spain because of the unnaturally abundance of dead cattle, just a thought.
Pasture lands decrease habitat that would support the wild animal populations that would normally feed the vultures. Are you aware of any numbers indicating an unnaturally high vulture population?
> Maybe there are too many vultures in Spain because of the unnaturally abundance of dead cattle, just a thought.
Nobody is trying to make the removal of corpses from inappropriate places illegal. They are trying to make it legal to leave some corpses in place.
According to the series of tweets under discussion:
6/ A handful of nesting colonies remain in Portugal, says Joaquim Teodósio, a biologist working for the Portuguese Society for the Study of Birds (@spea_birdlife
), but the vultures that occupy them spend the daylight hours abroad.
Also, it's nice to be an arm-chair environmentalist as long as that dead cow isn't rotting next to your house.
The person writing these tweets in English has a Spanish language description in their profile that says in part (when translated):
Science and environment journalist. I studied biology and scientific communication.
2) Vultures DO cross frontiers and the map clearly show this in two points.
This is the expected output because vultures travel far between two points, and in some places the shortest path from points A and B in Spain is through Portugal
3) I would not discard an artifact. I don't know the specifications of the procedures but I wonder if this could be just a technical problem, bad signal in one part of the map, stronger repeaters in the frontier picking or masking signals on the other side, etc...
Apr 9
I've seen them vanish.. Very sad.. Whenever I visit a village, I look for vultures... Nowhere to be seen... I guess they all reborn as govt employees of some divisions and politicians.
Lizanne Whitlow
@LizanneWhitlow
Apr 9
The cleanup crews are very necessary in our world
Well given than in Spain vultures are feeded by the remains of butchers, while in Portugal those remains are burned down(I believe), it is not a big surprise.
Laws change abruptly across boundaries, so it is not a surprise that vultures know when they are feeded or not.
Birds or animals are not stupid. Animals that are hunted know exactly when the hunting season starts and ends. I have seen deer separate in sexes when the hunting ban expires(because the law forbids females to be hunted down), so you will see females with offspring completely relaxed in front of people.
> Spanish farmers don’t collect dead cattle, but in Portugal, they must bury or burn all carcasses. This leaves no food for vultures, who have learned that the grass is always greener on the eastern side.
Why? What's the genesis of this difference? Does it have a tie-in to, say, a famous public health crisis? Who says there are no vultures on the Portugal side? Where can I learn more, if I want? Who works on this stuff? Pictures?
The short-form summary that provides this requires the same number of clicks to reach from HN as your comment.
Spanish farmers must do call authorised vets for removing dead cattle, by law. Laws among both countries are not so different, but this is non relevant. We are chasing a macguffin in my opinion...
Could the fact that the Spain/Portugal border is influenced by geography also be a major factor? Both the border and the birds' flight patterns are likely heavily influenced by geography
It's not just the first tweet, read the whole thread.
> The Portuguese-Spanish border follows river valleys and is not associated with abrupt changes in climate or land-use.
> The reasons for the mismatch are historical. In 2001, Europe’s answer to the mad-cow disease (BSE) crisis was banning the abandonment of dead livestock. [...]
[Conservationists] convinced European Union legislators to delegate the choice to member states. Some countries, like Spain, resumed cattle abandonment under special conditions. Portugal never changed its laws.
No matter what the story is, someone will always post the comment "In other news, water is wet" or "No news here, this has been known for 10 years" or something to that effect.
All bugs are shallow given enough eyeballs, I suppose.
[+] [-] squeaky-clean|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edge17|6 years ago|reply
More to read here if interested - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Silence#In_India
[+] [-] mywittyname|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rco8786|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m12k|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tobr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xenonite|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] personlurking|6 years ago|reply
Great Big Story: The Vultureman of Spain (3m14s)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQKaYUEknCU
"Manuel Aguilera wants you to know there’s no reason to fear vultures. The ornithological guide has gone as far as climbing into an animal carcass to get closer to the birds of prey. He’s spent 40 years studying the griffon vulture, and has dedicated his career to changing peoples’ perceptions of the birds, hoping to have others realize that they are majestic creatures to revere and protect."
[+] [-] celticninja|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] opwieurposiu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mc32|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jorge-d|6 years ago|reply
Vultures knows what country it should belong to \s
[+] [-] javierga|6 years ago|reply
I guess if I was to ask the average Brit about the sovereignty conflict with Spain regarding Gibraltar they would probably be non the wiser...
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|6 years ago|reply
Maybe Tibetan Buddhists, who feed their dead to vultures as a form of burial, are on to something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2376190/Chopped-fed...
[+] [-] berkes|6 years ago|reply
Burying or burning is a good "rite" or meme, that will avoid many deceases. In the way that it favours cultures who dispose of their dead this way, have a benefit over those who leave them "lying around", so to say.
Would a sky-burial work similar? Or does that simply spread the risk of contamination over a large area that it only helps cultures in really sparse areas?
[+] [-] socialist_coder|6 years ago|reply
Another example of this is in The Biggest Little Farm. The farmers have a problem with gophers. The "traditional" ways of handling gophers are all very expensive or have bad side effects. They figure out that if they attract owls to their farm by building owl houses, the owls take care of the gophers.
Both of those are good examples of letting nature work for you, rather than you trying to work against nature. For humans to have a sustainable future for tens of thousands of more years, I think we need to figure out how to work side-by-side with nature rather than try to bend nature to our will.
[+] [-] DoingIsLearning|6 years ago|reply
You had brucellosis scares in Portugal with a lot of media coverage, which lead to quite a few human brucellosis cases and several sheep and goats exterminated in containment measures.
I have no evidence that these are related but the corpse collection could be an over the top measure by the regulatory authorities to stop brucellosis disease vectors.
[+] [-] rozab|6 years ago|reply
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20359876
[+] [-] foxhop|6 years ago|reply
Nature's solutions and systems are almost always the most efficient, whether regarding to energy, time, or health.
[+] [-] rossdavidh|6 years ago|reply
Sometimes, avoiding a big mistake everywhere is more important than avoiding a big mistake anywhere.
[+] [-] perlgeek|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|6 years ago|reply
Rather, most of Portugal is included within a larger region where vultures mostly don't go, because they can't find food there.
[+] [-] PedroBatista|6 years ago|reply
Maybe there are too many vultures in Spain because of the unnaturally abundance of dead cattle, just a thought.
Also, it's nice to be an arm-chair environmentalist as long as that dead cow isn't rotting next to your house.
[+] [-] shkkmo|6 years ago|reply
Pasture lands decrease habitat that would support the wild animal populations that would normally feed the vultures. Are you aware of any numbers indicating an unnaturally high vulture population?
> Maybe there are too many vultures in Spain because of the unnaturally abundance of dead cattle, just a thought.
Nobody is trying to make the removal of corpses from inappropriate places illegal. They are trying to make it legal to leave some corpses in place.
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|6 years ago|reply
6/ A handful of nesting colonies remain in Portugal, says Joaquim Teodósio, a biologist working for the Portuguese Society for the Study of Birds (@spea_birdlife ), but the vultures that occupy them spend the daylight hours abroad.
Also, it's nice to be an arm-chair environmentalist as long as that dead cow isn't rotting next to your house.
The person writing these tweets in English has a Spanish language description in their profile that says in part (when translated):
Science and environment journalist. I studied biology and scientific communication.
(According to Google translate)
[+] [-] pvaldes|6 years ago|reply
2) Vultures DO cross frontiers and the map clearly show this in two points.
This is the expected output because vultures travel far between two points, and in some places the shortest path from points A and B in Spain is through Portugal
3) I would not discard an artifact. I don't know the specifications of the procedures but I wonder if this could be just a technical problem, bad signal in one part of the map, stronger repeaters in the frontier picking or masking signals on the other side, etc...
[+] [-] eitland|6 years ago|reply
Krishna Shamanth @KrishnaShamanth
Apr 9 I've seen them vanish.. Very sad.. Whenever I visit a village, I look for vultures... Nowhere to be seen... I guess they all reborn as govt employees of some divisions and politicians.
Lizanne Whitlow @LizanneWhitlow
Apr 9 The cleanup crews are very necessary in our world
[+] [-] hevi_jos|6 years ago|reply
I have seen them being feeded in mountains at the north of Spain called Picos de Europa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picos_de_Europa
Laws change abruptly across boundaries, so it is not a surprise that vultures know when they are feeded or not.
Birds or animals are not stupid. Animals that are hunted know exactly when the hunting season starts and ends. I have seen deer separate in sexes when the hunting ban expires(because the law forbids females to be hunted down), so you will see females with offspring completely relaxed in front of people.
[+] [-] pier25|6 years ago|reply
Case closed.
[+] [-] jcahill|6 years ago|reply
The short-form summary that provides this requires the same number of clicks to reach from HN as your comment.
[+] [-] pvaldes|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qqn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klhugo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qqn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alejohausner|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tr3ndyBEAR|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bnegreve|6 years ago|reply
> The Portuguese-Spanish border follows river valleys and is not associated with abrupt changes in climate or land-use.
> The reasons for the mismatch are historical. In 2001, Europe’s answer to the mad-cow disease (BSE) crisis was banning the abandonment of dead livestock. [...] [Conservationists] convinced European Union legislators to delegate the choice to member states. Some countries, like Spain, resumed cattle abandonment under special conditions. Portugal never changed its laws.
[+] [-] aaron695|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] umvi|6 years ago|reply
All bugs are shallow given enough eyeballs, I suppose.
[+] [-] Stratoscope|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jessaustin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] microtherion|6 years ago|reply