Dear Darasingh. If you search on Google for e.g. "dead animal scavenger", you will see a lot of pictures of vultures and other scavengers eating carcasses lying on their left shoulder. I consider it highly unlikely that scavengers would care about the alignment of a dead body. I have not read the paper, and cannot find it. Did the author not test the hypothesis? It seems to be quite easy to test...

Hello Shyoran,

I don't know its just a belief or truth or what is the reason behind it but I have recorded the similar incident in Nov. 2012 which was happened in my study area, the Kedarnath wildlife sanctuary, Uttarakhand, India. Just 500m away from the Kanchulakharak area (Forest Officer Rest house), One morning when I, with my field assistant left for the field data collection, we found a cattle died and lied on its left at just 5m the roadside. For the four-five consecutive days the carcass was there as such, like no scavenger even touched it.

I was very confused and then i discussed it to my assistant and the forest guard (Matbar Rana) and then i got to know that this is just because of its left direction, and similar is the belief of the locals of that area, I was also very surprised that time.

But I think there might be some other reasons behind that.

@Joacim agree with you. It do know they don't care about alignments. But, what about these exceptions as stated by @Zarreen?

Let me tell you, I myself encountered such incident 5 years back when two dead animals, one donkey and other is cow found dead in my study area. Cow was on its right and donkey on its left. Distance between two bodies was merely 15 metres. Cow was eaten up within few hours and donkey was totally ignored only to degrade in more than 20 days.

The first reaction- what rubbish!

But, wait, all these deaths are natural, not killed.

We just cant simply reject these beliefs, we have to have some work on it.

Well, it is very easy to test. First of all, any observation of a scavenger eating an animal lying on its left side would reject the hypothesis. Secondly, in a field experiment one could put pairs of animals (same species, same death cause) side by side, one on its left and one on its right - and then see what happens (a rigorous experiment would replicate this a number of times). Thirdly, pairs of animals could repeatedly be put in a zoo enclosure containing a scavenger, to see if it actually avoid one of them. Until it is proven, I regard these few observations reported on here as mere coincidences - anecdotal evidence is very weak evidence....

Dear Darasingh, dear All,

Is it possible if a man is lying on his left lions or other predators do not attack him?

@Joacim sir, I know 'Death on a wrong flank' is not a fact. But how should I explain above incidents?

These should be something that stopped these scavengers.

@András sir. I won't recommend this at all.

First, it is not a fact. It is only a belief, may be kind of superstition.

Second, it is about scavenger, that feed on dead bodies. Not the predators that kill somebody.

Dear Darasingh,

There are lot of other superstitions that men imitating they were dead were not killed by bears and lions. Certainly, this are mainly mythology and tales. I thought the same rule (if any) may work in case of predators and not only in scavengers. I think at this level of objectivity both can be approached.

In that position, PERHAPS the scavenger 'thinks' the dead animal is sleeping the sleep of Rest, and not of Death. I wouldn't think of going near a sleeping lion, neither would the scavenger :))

I said perhaps...

It seems a matter of adaptations for survival especially among the vultures. Because the learning process among birds is very rapid. I have studied feeding behavior of two vulture species in Pakistan including White-rumped Vulture (Gyps bengalensis) and Indian Vulture (Gyps indicus).

The population of these vultures have declined in South Asian region from 80 to 95 % in the recent years. Once distributed all over the country, these species are confined to southern Sindh in Pakistan where they still breed. The decline in the population of vultures is attributed to a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) known with the generic name of diclofenac. In the range countries of these vultures, diclofenac is widely used in cattle, donkey, horse but rarely in goat and sheep. In Tharparkar where all kind of carcasses are available to vultures, they feed only upon goat and sheep and avoid cattle, donkey and horse. In a vulture rehabilitation center in Punjab, the vultures were offered meat of donkey, buffalo, cow, goat, sheep but they took only sheep. This is because people do not use diclofenac for goat and sheep. Perhaps vulture have learnt to take the diclofenac free meat for their survival.

Dear Darasingh, have anyone noticed the vultures avoiding carcasses of sheep or goat ?

@Miranda, there are so many perhaps

@Waseem sir, we didn't noticed it yet with sheep or goat.

Lets go to the field work. Nature will tell the truth.