Have you ever wondered where wild animals go when they die? It turns out that there's no such thing as an Elephant's Graveyard or any other wild animal graveyard. When a wild animal dies, bacteria, insects, small animals, larger animals and vultures all contribute to breaking the body down so that the dead animal disappears after only a few days. But what about birds? Where do they go to die?
This is a question that my friend, Surekha, recently asked, and the answers are stranger than you might think. Despite their abundance, one never sees bodies of dead birds lying around. Rarely one does see bird remains left behind by a careless cat, but lying around dead from a natural cause? Never!
After browsing bird watching sites and skimming through ornithology resources, I found no concrete answers, just vague and funny ones. However, a philosopher once concluded that birds had an inner sensory device that told them when it was time to die, similar to bees. On the premonition of death, they too, like the bees, rise up higher and higher until they disintegrate in the upper air. This unpublished theory is the closest answer to my query.
This thought-provoking theory raises the question: are humans really at the apex of the evolution pyramid? If we go by the philosopher's hypothesis on the dying pattern of birds, then it would not be out of place to conclude that birds are at a higher plane than humans since they actually know when they are going to die, something that even the so-called evolved, aware, and intelligent human race does not know!
What do you think? Do you have any theories on where birds go to die?
No comments:
Post a Comment