37 Comments

Could New World vultures be exported to India?

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Good question!

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Would be interesting to see, and likely would have some fascinating avenues for new research. I wonder what would happen.

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See the long and sorry tale of introducing non-native species to remedy some problem or create some new resource. It ain't pretty.

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There's risk of them outcompeting native vultures... but those are already dying out. And I don't think vultures have many predators as it is. They're the end of the food chain.

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"Vultures are nature’s ‘metabolic dead end’. Blessed with the ability to eat the most foul and putrid messes". It is beyond ironic that these fascinating birds can eat the "most foul and putrid messes" with no ill effect but the presence of a pharmaceutical agent is the one that threatens their very existence. What a fascinating story, a sky burial for some reason sounds a fitting end to a life well lived, it appeals more to me than being buried in a cold, dank dismal earth.

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The whole story is full of little tragic layers like that, very sad.

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This is a microcosm of what's happening to the whole world. We're slowly poisoning ourselves to death

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I don't want to be writing articles in ten years about how 'microplastics are killing Buddhism' or whatever, but feels like the direction of travel

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Perhaps the Indian government would be encouraged to continue with the vulture captive breeding program if it knew the example of the Spanish government and its success in captive breeding of the Iberian lynx.

A fundamental predator in the Iberian Peninsula, it's faced with needing large territories uninhabited by humans, with the death of its main prey, the rabbit, due to myxomatosis, with being unable to understand the danger of the road network, like other animals and a loss of immunity against diseases that isn't yet well explained. However, they've gone from a few specimens to thousands with a very complex protection and breeding program, because the lynx doesn't like to breed in captivity and doesn't tolerate having humans around. It has been difficult.

Fantastic article.

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Having read the article again I hope both the Parsi culture and the vultures survive, what a perfect blend of man and nature living in harmony. Thank you for sharing this wonderful but very sad story.

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You're welcome, a sad but revealing tale

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I only know diclofenac from its use as a positive control in an assay called “microsomal stability”, a test used in pre-clinical drug discovery. it essentially uses liver extracts to see how long it will take a liver to degrade a potential drug. in my industry, these tests are common, and actually liver extracts from many species (e.g.mouse, rat, human, etc) are routinely used…but I’ve never seen vulture.

I’m not sure why diclofenac became a commonly used positive control, a molecule run in parallel with test molecules to make sure the essay is performing properly. It’s pretty clear that many mammalian species can degrade and metabolize diclofenac with few issues, but vulture, I guess, is not one of them.

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Maybe because its so cheap and abundant? By some measures its the most popular NSAID in the world. Birds are weird, they come from a totally different evolutionary path so some drugs affect them very badly, anesthetic is one classic example

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Perhaps one option is to introduce the gene that metabolized diclofenac into the vulture's genome. Though that might not be ideal with tradition, and the ban of use of the NSAID won't stop it from finding its way into the wild.

Other gene therapies have been produced In mosquitos:

https://www.npr.org/2024/01/26/1226110915/gene-editing-bioengineering-mosquito-disease-dengue-malaria-oxitec I'm not a huge fan of bioengineering, especially with human food and crops, and its unclear what ramifications that gene could lead to.

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Fascinating. Everything you write is fascinating.

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Thanks Aidan, means a lot!

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It seems very sad when you read it, but the sadness is not easily understood, referring to the Parsi not the vultures. The end of the Parsi doesn't entail a single death but rather an absence of births and objectively the only change is that no one will be following this way of life anymore. Would we feel the same sense of loss if all of the Parsi simply chose to walk away, as they are choosing not to reproduce? I am by no means a fan of tabula rosa, rootless living but to preserve a thing thoughtlessly is no wiser than destroying it thoughtlessly. Zoroastrianism is an old thing but is it a good thing?

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I know what you mean, it only has emotional resonance when one takes the bigger view, which is what history and evolutionary biology allow us to do.

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But what is the meaning of this bigger view? Are we finding a real significance that is missed without it? Or are we calling into existence a significance that would not exist otherwise, and if so is this significance true and worthwhile or not? You call it a 'bigger' view, but what about it is actually bigger, and perhaps more to the point better?

I think that we may be importing too much of the emotional freight from biological extinction. I thought that it was quite poetic the way that you connected the vultures extinction with the 'extinction' of the Parsi, but they are only analogies of one another. Let's not overidentify them. The way that the Parsi live, other people can live if they choose to. You may say that it is not identical but I am not convinced that the variation would be outside the current range of Parsi variation.

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Well the Parsi are the largest descendants of a ethno-religious group which maintain a tradition older than virtually all other extant belief systems. One can't put a 'value' on humanity's heritage, but I think this alone qualifies them as an 'artefact' of global human culture. It is ultimately subjective of course, and almost nothing of any utilitarian value would be lost if the Parsi disappeared tomorrow, except perhaps their relatively high human capital. However, I think most people would find something poignant, tragic, sad - for want of a better term - when they do eventually die out.

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As I was thinking about your piece and this conversation, I came across Yarvin's latest Gray Mirror. And he talks quite a bit about the difference between what benefits the Palestinian people and what benefits the Palestinian cause and how almost all of the concern that we see from 'Palestinian supporters' is intended to benefit the Palestinian cause at the cost of the Palestinian people e.g. staying in Gaza rather than going somewhere a little less genocidey.

I'm sorry to import something so charged into this discussion but it really helped to crystallize my thoughts. Preserving Zoroastrianism, the 'bigger view' that we were talking about is very good for the Parsi cause. But the whole procedure goes on without any consideration of what is good for the actual Parsi people. Identifying people with their culture such that what is good for the culture is good for the people may be the right course but it shouldn't be adopted unreflectedly, not meaning to imply that anyone here has done that.

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'However, I think most people would find something poignant, tragic, sad - for want of a better term - when they do eventually die out. ' That is absolutely true and I feel it myself. But this is because we have been taught this 'bigger view'. Or, I should qualify, you say that history and evolutionary biology allow us to take this bigger view. For myself, I am interrogating both its source and its validity.

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Zoroastrianism had it's time in the limelight - much like Christianity, it cannot stand strong in the face of modern woes. We will see where it all ends.

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rolls eyes

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I believe his comment has merit. Religions are subject to outside forces and sometimes die off. Look at paganism. I'm not talking about Wiccans and New Agers. I'm talking about actual Viking paganism or the religion of the Aztecs. Plenty of religions have died off as a result in the face of modern (being relative) woes.

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I believe that both of those 'religions' and I use the scare quotes because that term is used to lump together some very different things, were wiped out by Christianity, which our commenter supposes will now be destroyed by a thing which is itself almost dead, Modernity.

This seems reasonable if we simply through Aztecs, Vikings, Christianity, New Age, and whatever else comes to hand in a bucket called religion and assume that everything in the bucket is subject to the same forces and has the same content. But is that really true?

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We will see what comes of this modern world.

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This is incredible. Your best work! Now I desperately want a vulture solution.

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Huge praise, thank you! Yes, our grandchildren need to see teeming skies again

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I forwarded the article to a Parsi friend. He says:

In 81 when I went to consign my paternal grandmother to the Towers of Silence - I could see the writings were on the wall.

The raptors were conspicuous by their absence even then .

You could barely count the vultures on your fingers .

And we hardly needed rocket science to tell us that this system was not going to survive mainly because of the rampant vertical development in the city and also the virus .

Pre 80s there were hordes of vultures around our Towers of Silence .So much so that residents from neighbouring high rises took pot shots at them with powerful air guns. “

How strange are the things that cause peoples to die out.

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Fascinating, thank you.

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Glad you enjoyed it, thank you

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You are one of the most unique and interesting writers on substack.

I was reading an article on Parsees in India months ago and their demographic collapse. Such an interesting people, such a shame to see their numbers dwindle. The most fascinating part is where the writer interviewed a Parsi priest and he acknowledged their dwindling numbers but refused to support a change in the rules that one could convert to Zoroastrianism. He would rather their people die off but retain their beliefs and customs than change and (hopefully) increase their numbers.

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A quirky mish mash of ingredients that cooked up into a highly interesting and fascinating piece.

I doff my cap to you sir !

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I'm glad you enjoyed it, something for everyone!

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Exodus and realising this is Ahriman's doing.... And with one bound! Send them a copy of "When Prophecy Fails". They have to do what Xtianity did when it realised JC wasn't coming back anytime soon, or again with the Reformation. Xtianity and Rabbinic Judaism were both answers to what to do when Temple Judaism no longer cut the mustard. Religion, pesky thing, can always find a way!

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