Vultures slop around on dead meat all day. Fortunately for them they have two species of anaerobic bacteria living in their gut that help withstand any internal bacterial toxins AND they’re able to bathe their legs in their own urine to kill any outside bacterial toxins!

This all may seem vile, but it’s all necessary for both the vultures and us. Vultures play a major role in the ecosystem by munching on all the dead flesh hanging around. These scavenger birds help to get rid of potentially deadly bacteria and viruses that may inhabit and breed on rotting carcasses. We should praise them, really, for taking the heat and doing what they've evolved to do. Unfortunately, many species of vulture are either endangered or threatened. So, who’s going to do their job once we've killed them all?

But, to leave this one on a happier note, next time you pee your pants, just explain to everyone that you decided to take an anti-bacterial bath.

The Osedax mucoflon literally means Bone Eating Snot Flower. It’s a small sea worm that only really survives and proliferates when there is a whale carcass for it to consume. They don’t actually have stomachs or mouths; but, instead they attach themselves to the bones and team up with symbiotic bacteria to help digest the nutrients released from the fats and oils. The males, however, don’t actually feed on the whale. The females are the larger visible snot flowers. The males actually are microscopic dwarfs that live INSIDE of the lumen of a gelatinous tube that surrounds the females. These male dwellings are actually called “harems,” and there are anywhere from 30 to 100 males living inside of a female at a time! They sustain themselves on the yolk left over from the egg that they hatched from. It is said that the sex of these bone eating worms is actually determined by their environment. Apparently when females reproduce they disperse “undifferentiated larvae” into the ocean on a quest for whale bones. The larvae that settle on the bone turn into females, and the larvae that settle on top of the females turn to males! Once the whale is consumed most of the Bone Eating Snot Flowers die with the hope that the larvae floating in the ocean will find a new carcass to colonize.

The Osedax mucoflon is only one of countless more species of bone eating worm. You can read more about them hhhhheeeerrrrreeeeee.