Vulture bees are cool with pollen and nectar, but also eat meat - Toronto Sun

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Most people don’t like vultures or bees, but what about vulture bees?

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Yes, they exist. And while most of these types of bee eat pollen and nectar, some species prefer meat, such as animal carcasses.

Gross.

Researchers at California-Riverside, Columbia University and Cornell University studied the gut bacteria of these “killer bees” in Costa Rica.

What they found was the vulture bee guts are similar to those found in vultures, hyenas and other animals who eat roadkill and other carcasses.

The study was released on Tuesday in the journal mBio , published by the American Society for Microbiology, according to CNN .

CNN said only three bee species in the world have evolved to get protein only from dead meat. They live in tropical rainforests. There are also some bee species that consume both dead meat and pollen and nectar, the study found.

“The vulture bee microbiome is enriched in acid-loving bacteria, which are novel bacteria that their relatives don’t have,” Quinn McFrederick, an assistant professor and bee specialist at UC Riverside and an author of the study said, according to CNN.

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The research found from extracting DNA from the abdomens of vulture bees found that vulture bees had lost some of the core microbes most bees have and developed a more acidic gut.

Don’t worry, vulture-bee honey is still sweet and edible.

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Vulture bees are cool with pollen and nectar, but also eat meat - Toronto Sun
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