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Ever Wondered how vultures are able to eat rotten flesh and not die from the diseases the meat carries?

Well scientists have found out exactly why.

When meat goes off, it holds many different bacteria's that are deadly to humans and other animals. Yet Vultures are able to eat some of the most rotten meat and keep to their day to day doings.

Tests were conducted and they found Vultures of vulnerable to Botulism

Botulism is a rare and potentially fatal illness caused by a toxin, produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. The disease begins with weakness, trouble seeing, feeling tired, and trouble speaking. This may then be followed by weakness of the arms, chest muscles, and legs. The disease does not usually affect consciousness or cause a fever.

That insert was taken from the Botulism Wiki Page

They are able to eat meat that is infected with things such as bacillus anthracis ( The Bacteria that causes Anthrax ), Rabies and a lot of other diseases that wouldn't just kill humans but other scavengers as well

Ok so how do they do this?

Stomach acid, their stomach acid is so acidic that these bacteria infected meat chunks are disintegrated before they are able to do any harm to the vultures.

How acid you ask?

Well to put things into perspective see the graph below

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7 Being Neutral and 0 Being VERY acidic. The human stomach ranges between 1.5 and 3.

And Just like the Richter Scale, the ph Scale is also Logarithmic making each level lower 10 stronger than the previous.

So what is the ph level of a vulture?

Well, a Turkey Vulture has a ph level almost 0! Meaning its about a 1000 times stronger than humans stomach acid.

To understand this, a car battery has a Ph level of 0.8, A Turkey vultures stomach acid is so strong it could melt some metals.

I hope you guys learn't something today, if you did please follow me @warrensteem

Sources :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulture
http://animals.howstuffworks.com/birds/vulture-vomit1.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulism
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/12/vultures-dont-get-sick-diet-time-flying-pig-grounded-planes-heathrow-airport-exactly-sea-monkeys/