Vultures

x.com/aakashgupta/status/2088476778298065064

Yes, the core claims in the tweet are accurate and well-supported by scientific evidence and a major peer-reviewed economic study.

India’s vulture populations (especially Gyps species like the white-rumped, Indian, and slender-billed vultures) collapsed dramatically starting in the mid-1990s after the patent on the NSAID painkiller diclofenac expired around 1993–1994. Cheap generic versions became widely used on livestock. Vultures that fed on treated carcasses suffered kidney failure and died. Populations dropped from an estimated ~40–50 million birds to a few thousand within about a decade—one of the fastest collapses of any bird species on record (comparable in speed to the passenger pigeon’s decline in some descriptions). Diclofenac was banned for veterinary use in India in 2006, but recovery has been limited, and residual or illegal use plus other toxic NSAIDs remain issues.

Vultures have extremely acidic stomachs (near pH 1) that neutralize many pathogens (including those causing anthrax, botulism, and others) in carcasses. They efficiently strip carcasses (a flock can reduce a cow to bones in ~40–45 minutes), providing free large-scale sanitation in a country with cultural/religious practices that leave many cattle carcasses unprocessed.

Without them, carcasses accumulated, rotting material contaminated water and the environment, and feral dog populations rose (dogs are less efficient scavengers and major rabies vectors). A 2024 study by environmental economists Eyal Frank (University of Chicago) and Anant Sudarshan (University of Warwick), accepted/published in the American Economic Review, analyzed district-level data. In areas that had been highly suitable for vultures (and thus hit hardest by the collapse after diclofenac spread), all-cause human mortality rose by more than 4% (around 4.7% in some reports) relative to areas with historically low vulture presence. This equates to roughly 100,000–104,000 extra deaths per year from 2000–2005, or about half a million over five years. They estimated annual economic damages from the excess mortality at ~$69–69.4 billion (using an India-specific value of statistical life). Supporting evidence included rises in feral dogs, rabies-related factors, and water pathogens.

These findings have been widely reported by outlets including the BBC, CBS, Science, Smithsonian, and others, and align with earlier ecological research establishing diclofenac as the primary cause of the vulture crash. The tweet’s summary of the digestive role, population numbers, collapse speed, carcass disposal dynamics, mortality increase, annual death toll, and economic cost closely matches the study and scientific consensus. Minor phrasing details (e.g., exact “half a million… in five years”) are consistent with the estimates.