Introduction
If you’ve ever had a “back in our days…” conversation with someone who grew up in 1980s India, you’ve likely heard nostalgic references to pop culture phenomena that began to fade during the 1990s. With the liberalization of the Indian economy in 1991, many homegrown, soft-shelled brands couldn’t withstand the intense international competition flooding the market. Iconic names like Campa Cola and Gold Spot were displaced by global giants like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, while Premier Padmini was outshined by Maruti Suzuki. Even the beloved “Big Fun Bubblegum,” a symbol of the 1987 cricket World Cup, vanished from Indian shelves in the wake of economic liberalization. Yet, amidst these shifts, something far more significant was lost—the Indian Vulture.
The Indian Family of Vultures
Nativity and Classification
India hosts 9 species of vultures: Indian Vulture (Gyps indicus), Slender-billed Vulture (Gyps tenuirostris), White-rumped Vulture (Gyps bengalensis), Red-headed Vulture (Sarcogyps calvus), Bearded Vulture (Gypaetus barbatus), Cinereous Vulture (Aegypius monachus), Himalayan Griffon (Gyps himalayensis), Egyptian Vulture (Neophron percnopterus), and the Griffon Vulture (Gyps fulvus). The conservation status of all species range from Near Threatened to Critically Endangered.
Source: Curious Times
The Indian Vulture Gyps and gets both its common and scientific name from its nativity to the Indian subcontinent. Interestingly, the Slender-billed Vulture was considered a subspecies of the Indian Vulture until 2001 when mitochondrial and nuclear DNA evidence classified it as a separate species.
Description of Vultures
The Indian vulture is a medium-sized, sturdy bird. Its body and covert feathers are light brown, contrasting with its darker flight feathers. It has white thighs with scattered fluff, broad wings, and short tail feathers. The head is small, bare, and dark brown, with a long, featherless neck, dark eyes, and a long yellowish beak with a pale green-yellow cere. Measuring 89–103 cm (35–41 in) in length, its wingspan ranges from 2.22 to 2.58 meters (7 ft 3 in – 8 ft 6 in).
The giant bird’s stereotypical bald head helps regulate its body temperature. In cold weather, it pulls its neck close to its body for warmth, while in hot conditions, it extends its neck. The sparse feathers on its head also keep it clean when feeding on carcasses.
Weighing between 5.5 and 6.3 kg (12–14 lbs), the Indian vulture is smaller than the Eurasian griffon and can be identified by its less bulky body and wing coverts.
Distribution of Vultures
The Indian Vulture once soared in the skies from northeastern Pakistan to the south of India and from Indochina to the Malay Peninsula in the east. Today the territory of this large raptor has dwindled, restricting its presence to central and peninsular India, south of the Gangetic Plains.
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The Ecology of Vultures
Behavior
Vultures are large raptors which fly at some of the highest altitudes in the animal kingdom. They use thermal convection currents to soar A 2020 study of Bearded Vultures (Gypaetus barbatus) from the Spanish Pyrenees revealed that 65% of the food items delivered to the nests are bone fragments of a mountain sheep called Ovis, indicating the primary source of nutrition being bones. Interestingly, this does not apply to all of their species around the world.
The lappet-faced vulture of Mauritania will feed on infected dead carcasses, wiping out the disease from the ecosystem. With the lowest gastric pH in the animal kingdom (around 1), these birds can strip off rotten meat from decaying carcasses feasting for days after its death.
Species like the mountain-dwelling Bearded Vulture have stomachs so acidic that they will digest bones in merely 24 hours. These raptors feed on bone marrow and carry heavy bones to high altitudes and drop them on rock beds to crack them open. Larger vulture species will feed on meat even after 3 days of its passing, while smaller species will scrape through the remains and supplement their diet with feces (coprophagy). Depending on the feeding habit, vultures are classified into three categories: gulpers, rippers and scrappers.
Categories
- Gulpers will feed on soft tissues from the inside of a carcass. Gulpers have slender skulls, long, bald necks and bald heads. These features are considered to be adaptive to their feeding mode (soft-food-swallowing). A slender skull and a long neck may facilitate access to soft tissues located deep inside the carcass, whereas a bald head or neck may decrease the probability of infection.
- Rippers feed on more superficial, tough tissues like muscles and tendons. These birds have broader skulls and stronger beaks than gulpers and a feathered head is generally observed.
- Scrappers have a chicken-like feeding behavior wherein they peck their way around the carcass, feeding on meat scraps from bones. These possess a slender skull and the weakest beak, unsuitable for hard-tearing and engulfing large pieces of meat, but suitable for pecking small pieces of tissue on and around a carcass (pecking-swallowing).
This featured diversity in feeding and anatomy suggest reasons to coexist with each of the giant bird species having minimal competition for food.
Scavenging
As most of us know, vultures are associated with death. Most movies and films will showcase them in eerie, barren settings symbolizing death and drought. The bird does not have a particularly aesthetic appeal to itself when noticed by the common eye. Even though a lot of them do not resemble the stereotypical “bald”, “hairy-collared“, “seemingly wise” image, they’re perceived as not-so-fancy birds of the animal kingdom. Hence, we tend to forget the importance this “ugly” bird has in our lives.
Vultures act as the cleaners of the ecosystem they dwell in. Even though they are obligate scavengers, i.e. feed on dead, abandoned carrion only when fresh food is scarce; they are responsible for feeding on large carcasses and have the ability to devour flesh which is oxidized and contaminated to an extent where it makes the flesh inedible for any other animal (including hyenas). Their gastric pH is so low that they use their vomit as a defense mechanism against predators by throwing up a highly acidic puke when threatened.
Source: RoundGlass Sustain
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The 90s, Diclofenac and Kidney Failure
The Curse of Diclofenac
The 1990s marked a tragic turning point not only for homegrown brands in India but also for its once-thriving vulture population. As the economy opened up, so did the doors to new pharmaceutical products, including the veterinary use of Diclofenac—a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) commonly administered to livestock. What seemed like a miracle cure for cattle pain became a death sentence for vultures.
Diclofenac, when ingested by giant birds through the carcasses of treated livestock, leads to renal failure. Their kidneys, unable to process the drug, shut down rapidly, resulting in a gruesome death. The effects of this drug were so potent that within just a few years of its widespread use, their populations plummeted by up to 99% going from a strong 50 million to a near zero, across the Indian subcontinent. This led to the near-extinction of several vulture species, including the Indian Vulture, Slender-billed Vulture, and White-rumped Vulture.
The Ecological Impact of Vultures: A Domino Effect
Vultures play a crucial role in maintaining the health of ecosystems by efficiently disposing of dead animals. Without these “natural cleaners”, carcasses lay rotting in the open, attracting other scavengers like feral dogs and rats, whose populations have surged in the absence of vultures. Unlike these giant birds, these animals can spread diseases such as rabies, anthrax, and cholera to humans and other animals, causing significant public health crises.
Interestingly enough, the situation in India mirrors the collapse of vulture populations in Africa, where these giant birds help control the spread of anthrax, cholera, and rabies by swiftly consuming infected carcasses. However, unlike their African counterparts, Indian vultures couldn’t adapt to or resist the onslaught of Diclofenac, an artificial chemical that devastated their populations with unprecedented speed.
O Jatayu! Where have you gone?
Surprisingly our cultural ties with this bird are age long. In Indian mythology, vultures are revered as divine protectors. One of the most iconic vultures in Hindu lore is Jatayu, a noble bird who fought valiantly to save Sita, the wife of Lord Ram, from the demon king Ravana. Despite his efforts, Jatayu was mortally wounded and fell to the earth, symbolizing sacrifice, loyalty, and the tragic consequences of evil deeds. Sadly enough, the fate of India’s real-life vultures echoes the story of Jatayu—once guardians of the skies, they too have fallen, not in battle with mythical demons but against the very real and relentless forces of human negligence and greed.
Source: Google Arts and Culture
Hope for the Future: Conservation Efforts
Despite the catastrophic decline, all hope is not lost. Conservationists and scientists have taken steps to revive vulture populations by banning the veterinary use of Diclofenac in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Safe alternatives like Meloxicam are now being promoted, and captive breeding programs have been established to reintroduce them into the wild.
Additionally, conservation efforts include the establishment of “vulture restaurants,” where safe, Diclofenac-free carcasses are provided to sustain the remaining species populations. These measures, combined with ongoing public awareness campaigns, aim to restore these majestic birds to their rightful place in the skies.
Conclusion: A Symbolic Loss
The disappearance of the Indian Vulture is more than just an environmental tragedy; it symbolizes the broader loss of cultural and ecological identity in a rapidly changing India. Just as the iconic brands of the 1980s were pushed aside by global giants, once ubiquitous in the Indian landscape—have been replaced by an alarming void. The story of the Indian Vulture is a stark reminder of the delicate balance between progress and preservation, a balance that must be carefully managed if we are to protect the natural and cultural heritage that defines us.
References
- V. Prakash, D.J. Pain, A.A. Cunningham, P.F. Donald, N. Prakash, A. Verma, R. Gargi, S. Sivakumar, A.R. Rahmani
Catastrophic collapse of Indian white-backed Gyps bengalensis and long-billed Gyps indicus vulture populations,Biological Conservation,
Volume 109, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 381-390, ISSN 0006-3207,
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0006-3207(02)00164-7 - Anil Markandya, Tim Taylor, Alberto Longo, M.N. Murty, S. Murty, K. Dhavala, Counting the cost of vulture decline—An appraisal of the human health and other benefits of vultures in India, Ecological Economics, Volume 67, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 194-204, ISSN 0921-8009,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2008.04.020 - Marta Linde-Medina, Carmen Guerra, Josep Antoni Alcover, A revision of vulture feeding classification, Zoology, Volume 148, 2021, 125946, ISSN 0944-2006,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.zool.2021.125946 - D. Swarup, R. C. Patra, V. Prakash, R. Cuthbert, D. Das, P. Avari, D. J. Pain, R. E. Green, A. K. Sharma, M. Saini, D. Das, M. Taggar, Safety of meloxicam to critically endangered Gyps vultures and other scavenging birds in India, Zoological Society of London, Animal Conservation, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2007
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-1795.2006.00086.x - Wikipedia
FAQs
1. What is the main focus of the article?
The article explores the decline of vulture populations in India since the 1991 economic liberalization. The ecological role they play, and their cultural significance. It also discusses the impact of the drug Diclofenac on vulture populations and ongoing conservation efforts.
2. How many species of vultures are native to India, and what are their conservation statuses?
India hosts nine species of vultures, including the Indian Vulture, Slender-billed Vulture, and White-rumped Vulture, among others. The conservation status of these species ranges from Near Threatened to Critically Endangered.
3. What caused the dramatic decline in vulture populations in India?
The decline in vulture populations began in the 1990s. It happened with the widespread use of Diclofenac, a drug administered to livestock. When vultures consumed carcasses of treated animals, they suffered from renal failure and death.
4. What role do vultures play in the ecosystem?
Vultures act as scavengers, helping to clean up ecosystems by consuming dead animals. This prevents the spread of diseases and reduces the risk of health crises caused by rotting carcasses and other scavengers.
5. How have conservationists responded to the decline in vulture populations?
Conservation efforts include banning Diclofenac and promoting safer alternatives like Meloxicam. Captive breeding programs and “vulture restaurants,” which provide safe, Diclofenac-free carcasses, have also been established to support vulture recovery.
6. What cultural significance do vultures hold in India?
In Indian mythology, vultures are seen as divine protectors. The story of Jatayu comes from Hindu legends. Jatayu was a brave vulture who tried to protect Sita. Jatayu’s actions show great sacrifice and loyalty. In Indian culture, this story helps highlight the respect given to vultures.
7. What is the current status of vulture populations in India?
Vulture populations in India have declined by up to 99% due to the effects of Diclofenac. However, ongoing conservation efforts offer hope for recovery and the restoration of these birds to their natural habitats.
8. Why is the decline of vultures considered a symbolic loss?
The decline of vultures in India is a sign of losing both cultural and ecological identity. This is similar to how iconic local brands from the 1980s were replaced by global companies. It shows the importance of finding a balance between progress and the protection of natural and cultural traditions.
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