After following the expedition team into the empty and uninhabited Hoh Xil no man's land, he found that several vultures were hovering over a lone Tibetan antelope walking over the wasteland, unwilling to leave for a long time.
Soon, a steppenwolf rushed over, knocked down the Tibetan antelope, and then started to feast on it. These vultures also landed on the ground one after another, and you slurred at the Tibetan antelope, while they grabbed a piece of the wild wolf's pie.
★The vulture is the ghost of death that sends an "invitation to kill" to the wild wolf.
I was surprised and asked: How does this wild wolf know that there is a lonely Tibetan antelope in the vast desert?
Lao Pu from the reserve said: The vulture told the wild wolf.
I continued to ask: Why doesn’t this Tibetan antelope run? Its speed is enough to escape the pursuit of wild wolves.
Lao Pu said: Because the Tibetan antelope knows that its sick and weak body will not live long. Therefore, it left the flock and walked alone and alone on the road to the "Kingdom of Heaven".
I asked again: How does the vulture know that this Tibetan antelope has reached the end of its life?
Lao Pu said: Because the vulture is the ghost of death in Hoh Xil. It can sense which animals are about to die, so it sends a killing invitation to the Steppenwolf in Hoh Xil.
I was shocked: The vulture issued an invitation to kill the wild wolf?
Lao Pu said: Yes! As long as the steppenwolf in the distance sees the vulture circling somewhere, he will know that there are animals about to die there, including people.
I felt chills all over after hearing this, and once again raised my head to stare at the groups of vultures flying and circling in the air.
★Vultures can smell the smell of death 2,000 meters away.
Suddenly, I found that some vultures actually flew above our research vehicle, hovered and soared for a while, and then flew away.
Old Pu from the reserve saw me paying attention to the vultures flying far away, and said jokingly: Fortunately, these vultures flew away, otherwise, I really doubt that there are "dangerous elements" among us!
I was shocked: What is a dangerous person?
Lao Pu said cruelly: People who are about to die.
I was even more surprised: amazing! Vultures can detect the death aura of dying people or animals? What kind of terrible smell is this?
Lao Pu said: Vultures are raptors that specialize in eating rotting animal carcasses. Naturally, thousands of years of life evolution have allowed vultures to evolve a special ability - the ability to smell the death breath of humans or animals in advance.
★What is the breath of death?
What is the breath of death?
Lao Pu said: I am not an expert, so I can only give a rough rough idea - when humans or other mammals are on the verge of death, the organs in the body have begun to decay, and this decay will produce some special gases.
If you are in a hospital, an experienced doctor will tell you from the patient's face that he is about to die. However, vultures cannot see if a person is alive at close range. It can only observe with its increasingly sophisticated sense of smell.
When a person or animal is about to die, the rotten smell in the abdomen will be expelled from the body with weak breathing.
The vulture's sense of smell is very powerful. It can smell the smell of death from several kilometers away. Therefore, it will track the dying person or animal and prepare a sumptuous meal.
As a result, some people call vultures the ghosts of death in the wilderness.
In fact, owls and crows can also smell this death smell. The main reason why people dislike crows is not that they are covered in black feathers, but that they know that humans and animals are about to die.
And it is said that an owl can land on the roof of a house where an elderly person is about to die in advance, which is the basis for the saying that "night owls come into the house - they come for everything".
The smell of death is mainly the smell of sulfur-containing organic matter, among which the smell of ethyl mercaptan is the strongest and pungent. People are most disgusted by the smell of foot odor, bad breath and corpse odor. The smell of death is the smell of the smelliest part of human feet, bad breath, and corpse odor. Ethyl mercaptan is formed by replacing the oxygen atoms in ethanol with sulfur atoms.
★Vultures occupy the air superiority of the wilderness
Lao Pu said: Vultures soar over the wilderness every day. Their field of vision is extremely broad and their vision is extremely sharp. It is said that they can see the rolling shape of grains blown by the wind at an altitude of several kilometers.
With its broad field of view, sharp eyesight, and the ability to smell death a few kilometers away, the vulture can accurately capture a target that is about to die, then track it and report it to the Steppenwolf. Its reporting form is tracking and circling.
Whenever Steppenwolf sees a vulture circling there, he knows there is carrion to eat, or a dying person or animal to hunt.
Lao Pu also told me a more cruel news: those travel friends who secretly broke into the no-man's land of Hoh Xil, under severe hypoxia, altitude sickness, extreme climate, extreme fear, psychological collapse, and hallucinations, the internal organs in the body may begin to produce the rotten gas of death. They then quickly become prey for vultures and steppenwolves.
Why are they missing? It is possible that after the corpse was eaten clean, the bones were also picked up by various predators.
★Vulture, reporting of death is a reward.
Lao Pu said: A vulture has wings that can stretch up to three meters, but its flying ability is very weak and it can only fly with the help of rising airflow with its wide wings.
This is a flying stunt. Flightless vultures can fly across the Himalayas thanks to updrafts.
In addition, although the vulture also has the same hooked beak and sharp claws as the golden eagle, its hooked beak and sharp claws cannot be used for attacking, and can only be used to tear up dead corpses.
In this regard, the vulture is very pitiful, and its ugly appearance with a bald neck and bald head often makes people disgusted.
Therefore, vultures can only pick up carrion in the wasteland to eat. Sometimes, in order to eat carrion as quickly as possible, it will often focus on people or animals in the wilderness.
Once the breath of death is detected, the vulture will use its body language to tell the Steppenwolf: There is a person or animal who is about to die here, come and hunt it quickly.
After the steppenwolf arrives and the hunt is completed, the vultures will descend one after another and confidently take a share of the pie. But sometimes the food looks too ugly, and the wolf will try its best to drive them away.
★ If the vulture eats too much, it will automatically uninstall
Lao Pu said: There are all kinds of wonders in the world. Vultures that specialize in scavenging clean up the decay on the ground, thus keeping the wasteland and grasslands clean and preventing the outbreak and spread of infectious diseases. Therefore, they are called wasteland scavengers.
Vultures are very strange. No matter how corrupt they eat, they will not get sick. Because it has a strong stomach and special gastric juice that can powerfully suppress all viruses and germs. No matter how overbearing the virus and germs are, once they enter the stomach of the vulture, they will be instantly conquered by the vulture's gastric juice.
Since vultures cannot hunt, once there is food, they will fight for it and eat a lot of rotten meat in one meal. After eating too much meat, the belly became big and the weight increased. The two flightless wings were unable to bear the power of taking off, so they had to squat in front of the skeleton of the carrion and wait for it to be digested slowly.
However, if it sees a wolf or other ferocious beast that wants to take the opportunity to attack it, it will quickly unload - quickly spit out the carrion in its belly, and then fly away to avoid danger.
Lao Pu’s explanation of Hoh Xil Reserve made me sigh. Nature is so magical that it has created thousands of strange species. But I am only frightened by the ability of vultures to sense the death breath of dying people.
It seems that it is not too much to call vultures the ghosts of death in the wasteland. (About the author: Wang Tianxiang is a senior journalist and writer. He has published 42 novels and other various monographs, written more than 200 episodes of TV series, created dozens of TV films on history, culture, scenery, documentary and other topics, published hundreds of articles in various newspapers and periodicals, and published more than a thousand online articles.)
(Special note: The pictures accompanying this article are selected from the Internet. If notified of infringement, they will be deleted. Thank you!)
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