Why we must not look down on creatures that clear the mess around us
The cleaning squad of animals, whose lives' work is to clean up, is dedicated to the idea of recycling.
Even by themselves, vultures are hugely efficient. Salim Ali has mentioned that a flock of about 200 vultures can clean up a buffalo’s carcass in 20 minutes.
Most of us are familiar with the three inexorable “laws” of nature: “kill or be killed”, “eat or be eaten,” and “survival of the fittest”. To these, I would add a fourth: “clean up or be cleaned up” and its corollary: “recycle or die!” Mother Nature has got this pretty well sorted out by providing a vast army of creatures whose lives’ work is just this. And we, right on top of the food chain, armed with the best brains, invariably turn up our noses at them.
The ocean bed is subject to a constant drizzle of debris and detritus falling from above: the remains of dead sea-creatures, sometimes entire carcasses (whales), sink and settle. They could choke seagrasses and corals. But, an army of “bottom-feeders” gets to work, hoovering them up. A whale’s rotting carcass will be taken apart by sharks, snacked on by sea lions, nibbled at by turtles and then worked clean by smaller fish and crustaceans. Nothing is left to rot in the underwater garden. We sneer contemptuously at these “bottom feeders” (like basa fish), the term has become derogatory, yet, without bottom feeders, there would be no “top feeders”.
It’s the same story above ground. We admire the cunning way lionesses plan and execute their hunts, chivvying their prey into traps and taking down anything from wildebeest to buffaloes and elephants. After gorging, they loll around, bellies bursting. High above, their feasting has been observed by those broad-winged, sharp-eyed flying aces: vultures. As they spiral down, they’re spotted by the gigglers, armed with the strongest jaws in the animal kingdom: the hyenas. They lope in, and, if they are enough in numbers, will even drive away from the legitimate owners of the kill. Their jaws can crack femurs and bite right through skulls, so it’s better to give way. They giggle and snivel around the kill, cleaning it up while being watched by smaller jackals, who may dart in from time to time to snatch a tidbit. The vultures, meanwhile, land and wait patiently. Everyone gets a turn. Of course, there’s much unsightly squabbling as the feeding frenzy commences (imagine behaving like that at a dinner party). Even the noble eagles gladly scavenge on a kill. All too soon, the carcass is picked clean and then come to the ants and tiny-tots.
Even by themselves, vultures are hugely efficient. Salim Ali has mentioned that a flock of about 200 vultures can clean up a buffalo’s carcass in 20 minutes. High on the mountains, the lammergeyer, or bearded vulture, goes in just for bones and marrow: its digestive acids dissolve bones as they enter its stomach. For dead domestic livestock, there could be no more efficient disposal system than this. Other “scavengers” do well, too: feral dogs and cats, for example, but there can be a price to pay. After the Diclofenac holocaust which all but decimated the vultures, the population of feral dogs exploded as they prospered, and with that came increased cases of rabies.
But there’s day-to-day cleaning-up to be done: All animals leave steaming piles of dung which has to be dealt with. The herbivores — elephants, for example — have notorious digestive systems. Their dung contains 60 per cent undigested fare and this cannot be wasted. The specialists here have got to be the dung-beetles. Some live in dung, some roll dung-balls and trundle off to bury them and lay their eggs in them. For their babies, it’s rich, fruity fare. They all eventually turn the stuff into useful, nutritious soil. This clean-up act is vital — otherwise, infections would spread like wildfire. When livestock was introduced in Australia, the local dung beetles (used to kangaroo dung) could not deal with cattle dung. The continent was in danger of being buried neck-deep in the muck. Then, they imported dung beetles from other countries to deal with the situation and Australia cleaned up.
Other creatures, too, find dung tasty. I’ve watched (with disgust) mynas help themselves to a breakfast of human waste in a field early morning. Out for her walks at the Mahalaxmi racecourse, our highly-pedigreed boxer, Bambi, would make a beeline for horse-dung — gobbling it up by the mouthful as if it were delectable fudge.
Villagers have used dried cattle-dung, or gobar, the ethnic “in-thing”, as fuel for centuries. But then, we, too, leave our steaming piles all over the place. Walk past any wall (especially during winter) in a city, and you’ll stop breathing and skirt puddles. Our rivers are toxic sewers, the seas have become floating islands of plastic flotsam, the air is acrid, the skies beige, and “landfills” resemble simmering hill-ranges. Watch with horror as the guy in the shiny Mercedes ahead of you stops at a traffic light, opens his door and expectorates a gallon of vile red spittle on the road (he ought to be made to lick it up). And, worst of all, our dear cows, in cleaning up our mess, are ingesting the millions of plastic bags that festoon the roadsides.
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