Bence Máté's Image

After two months of labour, Bence's hide was finally excavated and the king vulture banquet ready.

'I'd seen nothing but black vultures for weeks,' he says. 'So I'd been to the nearest town, 40 kilometres [25 miles] away from where I was staying in northern Costa Rica, to see if I could scrounge a carcass that might attract a king.' A sympathetic butcher gave him three cow heads. 'I knew that king vultures can smell fresh meat from several kilometres away, but it was a great surprise to me when they turned up almost straight away.' With a powerful, sharp beak, complete with a meat hook, and a rasping, flesh-stripping tongue, a king vulture (right) is itself a bit like butcher. It is often the first vulture to rip open a tough carcass, and this allows other vultures such as the black vulture (left) access to the softer meat inside.