World Cup 'Vulture Smoking' Theatens Rare Birds

As the World Cup gets underway in South Africa, scientists are betting that one of the biggest losers in the soccer championship will be the endangered vulture. In South African traditional medicine called muti, vulture brains are dried, ground up, and smoked as cigarettes to give users what they believe are dreams about the future—including visions of winning lottery numbers or sports teams, making the practice a big hit among gamblers, Scientific American reports.

With seven of South Africa's nine vulture species classed as endangered, scientists fear the birds won't be able to withstand the boom in gambling—and the run on vulture brains—kicked off by the World Cup. "The harvesting of the bird's heads by followers of muti magic is an additional threat these birds can't endure," says the director of a South African bird conservation group.
(More endangered species stories.)