It appears that Germans too are exhibiting a serious case of mental deficiency. BBC News reported on June 02, 2011 that German police are training vulture 'detectives' to find hidden bodies. Three feathered detectives – called Sherlock, Miss Marple and Columbo – are receiving their training in Walsrode bird park in northern Germany.
Accordingly, the birds' keen eyesight and acute sense of smell might make them as skilful as their fictional namesakes. Also the vultures are thought to be better than sniffer dogs at finding bodies when a large area has to be searched and the terrain is difficult; e.g. if it is densely overgrown. What’s more, Police are using three birds because the vultures prefer to roam big areas as a group.
But Germany's Berliner Morgenpost newspaper says this innovative idea raises ethical concerns because of the risk that a vulture could start pecking at a dead body.
I think the bigger issue is if the lifeless body is not yet a corpse, but only unconscious or semi-conscious. Can you imagine a victim regaining consciousness only to discover one of his/her eyeballs missing or part of the flesh on his/her arm has been stripped to the bone or part of his/her face has been eaten away?
Image credit: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/zombies-demotivational.jpg
You might ask what if we feed the vultures really well and so they won’t have any hunger stirrings at all when they come across inert bodies?
We could condition them to “behave” outside of the designated meal times, can’t we? Remember Pavlov’s experiment?
Still, we are taking a chance with these vultures. Are they trainable in the first place, I am wont to ask? Hmmm, I wonder…
I don’t believe that the vultures' habits are a perfect fit for the job of detective, I really don’t.
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