The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: July 3, 2011

Official News page 9


REAL LIFE NEWS: VULTURE CORPSE SNIFFER AFRAID TO FLY

by Hazed

Many people are afraid of flying. But that's understandable in humans. Not so much in birds.

One vulture's distaste for taking to the air has scuppered an ingenious plan by German police to use the carrion-eating birds to sniff out dead bodies!

Police in Lower Saxony had hoped to train a team of vultures to find corpses. After all, they feed on dead, rotting things so it would seem a natural use for their talents. Turkey vultures hunt by smell and can detect the gases produced by decomposition. So the plan was to fit them with GPS trackers, so police could follow whenever they swooped down on a dead person.

But things didn't go to plan. Sherlock, the first vulture to be trained, doesn't seem to like flying, preferring instead to hop around on the ground. Also, he seems to be having problems telling the difference between rotting people and rotting animals.

Two more vultures, named Miss Marple and Columbo, were brought in to be trained as well, but all they do is fight each other.

Never work with children or animals. Or birds!

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/30/german_vulture/


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