A grudge can crop up for trifling reasons, only to take on a life of its own and get serious as a heart attack. Sometimes a grudge can be petty, like the time when Rick James almost beat up Prince because he was jealous of the Purple One. Sometimes, not so much, like the time an Indian Maharajah massacred hundreds of environmentalist tree huggers. Below are twenty things about some fascinating historic grudges.
22. An English Naturalist’s Petty Grudge Against an American Birdman
Do vultures find dead animals by smell or by sight? In the early nineteenth century, that question riled people up even more than whether the dress is blue or gold angered people in the twenty first century. Instinctive common sense supported the take that buzzards found food via smell. They scavenge dead animals, dead animals stink, so vultures must scent the stench, and follow it down to a rotting meal. Then American ornithologist John James Audobon conducted an experiment in the 1820s that challenged that assumption. He made a dummy of a dead deer stuffed with straw, and left it in the open. Buzzards flocked to and tore it up, looking for a meal. Next, he hid rotting meat under straw and left it in the open. No vulture approached it. Audobon’s conclusion that buzzards scavenge by sight rather than smell created quite the kerfuffle.
Nerd naturalists split into rival factions. Supporters of the smell theory, known as Nosarians, were pitted against Audobon’s sight side, known as anti-Nosarians. When in 1826 Audobon presented his take to naturalists in London, one of them, English conservationist and definite Nosarian Charles Waterton, grew so outraged, that he wrote a newspaper, advocating that Audobon “ought to be whipped” for his heresy. He followed that up with nineteen letters over the next five years to the Magazine of Natural History, smearing Audobon and challenging his theory. When the magazine eventually stopped publishing his letters, and even ceased to respond to his correspondence, Waterton self-published them himself. For what it is worth, both Audobon and Waterton were partially right. Some vultures, like black vultures, track carcasses by sight, and have a poor sense of smell. Others, like turkey buzzards, rely on smell to home in on rotting meat.
