Did you know … buzzards have strong enzymes in their stomach that kill off toxins from decaying flesh?

It’s no secret that of all things on this planet my strongest love and admiration go to animals, particularly the ones close to my heart, but I love all animals, indeed. Well, perhaps not flies, or fruit flies, or mosquitoes. I wouldn’t friend a snake but I wouldn’t harm one either. You get the point, I hope.

Learning about animals has been one of my favourite things to do since I was a child. Unfortunately, that was not thanks to my biology teachers. Let’s not get there, though. That's something for some other time.

Anyway, the other day, I was reading something and I learned that buzzards, which are birds of prey, also called vultures, have too many toxins in their body from eating dead animals and because of that their own flesh becomes toxic, and that’s the reason why other animals avoid eating them. They probably smell bad and the other animals can smell the toxins.

So, I became extremely interested in these creatures. As you can guess, I wanted to know how they were not killed by all the toxins and how other animals know buzzards are toxic so they know not to eat them.

In case you don’t know what a buzzard is, in North America, buzzard is the common name for a turkey vulture. Buzzards feed on carcasses of dead animals, and use their incredible vision and their keen sense of smell to patrol the ground below them from the sky for food, seeking out the scent of decaying flesh. Buzzards can spot a carcass from up to four miles away.

That’s right, buzzards eat dead things. Very dead things. And how is it then that they don’t get sick and die after eating decayed flesh? Because their stomachs have strong enzymes that kill off dangerous toxins and micro-organisms present in the poor dead things.

It’s thanks to these enzymes that neutralise toxins that they don’t have to fight to share the food. At the same time, the toxins protect them from being eaten by other animals. Another animal has to be very, very hungry to eat a buzzard, and consequently die.

Another interesting characteristic is that buzzards have the ability to vomit when they are threatened or disturbed, this is a defence mechanism they use to get lighter and escape quickly, especially right after a meal.

There are 23 different species of buzzards which are found on every continent except on Australia and Antarctica. Because of their eating habits, we could say that they play an important role in cleaning up the environment.

So you know, no matter how hungry you are, never eat one of those birds.