The Truth about Vultures.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JUNE 17, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 061701np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Reading People
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:06

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Jo-Ellan Dimitrius is a jury consultant whose work is helping to change the nature of high profile trials. Some say for better; others for worse. Her job is to evaluate which potential jurors are likely to be most sympathetic to her client. She worked for the defense in the trials of OJ Simpson, the Los Angeles police accused of beating Rodney King, and the four young men accused of beating Reginald Denney (ph). She also represented the defense in the McMartin preschool trial.

Her tools include focus groups, mock juries, surveys, statistical analysis, and the powers of observation. Her new book, "Reading People," offers advice on how to size people up and predict their behavior. Some legal experts object to the growing role of jury consultants and say that their approach goes against the idea of a fair and impartial jury.

JO-ELLAN DIMITRIUS, JURY CONSULTANT, AUTHOR, "READING PEOPLE: HOW TO UNDERSTAND PEOPLE AND PREDICT THEIR BEHAVIOR": Well, there certainly has been a great deal of criticism about what it is that as a jury consultant we do. But I really believe that particularly in the case of a criminal defendant -- a criminal defendant is faced with a number of -- they're behind the ball, if you will, in terms of a level playing field.

There is, number one, the fact that jury duty is a matter of economic determinism. Jurors only serve if they can afford to serve, and their jobs afford them to serve. And so the Sixth Amendment guarantee that a defendant have a jury of their peers has not been met, and it's not been met for a very, very long time.

So right away, you've got a disadvantage to a criminal defendant because they're not met with a jury that's reflective of community conscience. That's number one.

Number two, most people believe -- 80 percent of the people believe -- that if a person walks into a courtroom, if they've been arrested, they're probably guilty. And then lastly, you add to that, particularly in a high profile case, the number of biases just based on the media -- information disseminated by the media -- they're at a tremendous disadvantage.

So I believe what I do is I bring it to a level playing field.

GROSS: Now, in terms of a level playing field, the prosecution can't always afford to pay jury consultants. Does that leave the playing field uneven if the defense has the benefit of a jury consultant like you and the prosecution doesn't?

DIMITRIUS: Well actually, the prosecution now in all the big cases have actually used jury consultants. Certainly in the OJ Simpson case, it was utilized, as it was in the Lyle Menendez and also the trial of -- the bombing trial in Oklahoma. Both of the defendants for the prosecution had a jury consultant available.

But I might add to that that the prosecution has all of the skills and background information available -- by that I mean law enforcement -- such that with perspective panels of jurors, what oftentimes they do is to do criminal record checks, civil record checks. They know more about these people than the defense does because they have the resources with which to evaluate and find out about the perspective juror pool.

That's something that the defense does not have, and if they had access to that, would cost thousands if not millions of dollars to find out.

GROSS: One of the tools that you have is somewheres between the focus group and a mock jury. You often assemble people and test out certain questions on them before asking them to the perspective jurors. Tell us a little bit about how -- what information you look for from the mock jurors that you assemble before actually meeting the jury pool.

DIMITRIUS: Mock jury or focus group is used for two specific purposes. Number one, they're used to test out the strengths and weaknesses of your particular case. By bringing in an assortment of people -- usually you bring in 24 people that are reflective of the community in which the trial will be held -- you present to them a synopsis, if you will, of both sides of the case.

Oftentimes in civil trials, you'll actually have videotaped depositions from the litigants themselves, and be able to test out what they think about those particular people. So you're going to evaluate whether or not -- what the lawyer thinks is the accurate theme or strategy is proper based on this mock jury.

The second thing that it's used for is to evaluate what types of people may be more open to hearing your side of the case. As we know, in any case you're not going to get 12 people that are hand-picked by you or your team. You're going to get hopefully a jury that's reflective of the community conscience. But you do want to see how they react to it and you want to find out how to neutralize the worst-case scenario from the other side. I mean, that's basically what a focus group is all about.

GROSS: Now let's talk about the focus group that you assembled before facing the potential jurors for the OJ Simpson trial. You say in your book that you asked the focus group questions about their age, their sex, their race. Then you ask questions about their employment history, hobbies, education, marital status, what they read, what TV shows and movies they watch, organizations they belong to. You asked about life experiences.

Then you asked about attitudes -- their attitude toward the death penalty; do they think people too -- sue too much. And then you asked the mock jurors key facts about the OJ Simpson case and asked for their initial reaction to those issues.

So what do you do then? You correlate employment history, what movies people watch, with what they were likely to think of OJ Simpson's guilt or innocence?

DIMITRIUS: Right. There is what we call a verdict question, and obviously the verdict question is: At that point, do you believe that OJ Simpson is guilty or not guilty?

GROSS: Mmm-hm.

DIMITRIUS: We do a statistical analysis based on all the other factors that you just mentioned, and find out what factors are what we call the most predictive of whether or not someone would be more of a defense-prone juror or a prosecution-prone juror.

GROSS: So what were the most predictive of the predictive factors?

DIMITRIUS: Well, I think as you can well imagine, the attitude and experience with law enforcement was the first and foremost, the most critical element in terms of evaluating these people. If there were people -- and it went across the board, no matter what ethnicity you were -- if you had had some sort of a negative encounter with law enforcement, be it LAPD or anyone else, you were more likely, which makes sense, to be suspect of law enforcement, if it was some sort of negative type of interaction.

GROSS: What about -- did you ask people about their experiences with spousal abuse?

DIMITRIUS: We did ask that, and the thing that we found with regard to spousal abuse was that in the African American community, specifically relating to females within the African American community, they believed that simply because there had been spousal abuse, the logical next step wasn't necessarily murder. And out of all the ethnicity questions that we asked, that was -- that really played out very, very carefully.

And I might add that this was not just in the focus group that we found this out, but we actually did four community attitude surveys, which are telephonic surveys -- lasted about 15 to 20 minutes -- that were done within the community in which the trial was ultimately held.

GROSS: So white people were more likely to think that spousal abuse could escalate to murder than African Americans were?

DIMITRIUS: Correct.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is jury consultant Jo-Ellan Dimitrius. She was a consultant on the OJ Simpson case, Reginald Denney, Rodney King, the McMartin preschool. She has a new book called Reading People, about how to analyze people and size them up.

Now I know you used focus groups not only to help select the jury, but you used focus groups during -- during -- you used -- often use them during trials as well, as you did for the OJ Simpson trial. And I think you also used a focus group to determine who would make the closing argument in the case.

DIMITRIUS: Right.

GROSS: And Johnnie Cochran was obviously selected. What was the reaction from the focus group that made you decide Johnnie Cochran was the one to close?

DIMITRIUS: Well, it was interesting. We actually tested out all the attorneys on both sides. And we had the mock jury rank these -- all of the attorneys.

GROSS: This is from watching videos of the trial?

DIMITRIUS: Right. Just from people being familiar with watching it, whether it was Court TV or one of the news channels; people that were familiar with the trial based on what they had seen, read, or heard; how they viewed all the various players, if you will, within the trial.

And what we found was at the top of the list was Johnnie Cochran, followed closely behind by Barry Scheck (ph). And the prosecution -- the highest-ranked within the prosecution was Marcia Clark, who was only one higher than our lowest attorney.

So I mean, I was actually quite surprised to see -- to see that, but it was very clear from what they thought of our team in particular, that the people that were going to have to go forward with the final closing arguments were Johnnie Cochran and, of course, Barry Scheck because of the science aspect of the case.

GROSS: You were at the OJ Simpson trial most days, I think.

DIMITRIUS: I was.

GROSS: Did you watch the jury the whole time? Did you just constantly study their faces?

DIMITRIUS: I did, but I have to say that it was one of the most remarkably poker-faced group of jurors that I've ever seen. But by the same token, they were also the best dressed jury that I'd ever seen.

GROSS: Best dressed, did you say?

DIMITRIUS: Oh, indeed, yes.

GROSS: Now, what qualifies as "best dressed"? What standards are you using?

DIMITRIUS: Well, I'm using all the other trials that I've ever worked on, where I see jurors coming in. You know, I've seen jurors coming in in everything from shorts and T-shirts to, you know, scroungy (ph) jeans. This jury consistently -- the men in this jury consistently had on suits and ties, which you never see, or you rarely see, I should say.

GROSS: Do you think it was because it was televised? People put on their finest?

DIMITRIUS: Well, they certainly put on their finest while -- of course, the jury was never shown and cannot be shown in any proceeding. They -- they had everybody from Barbara Walters to Geraldo Rivera trooping in and out of the courtroom. And they knew that they were being watched, just as we knew that they were watching us, too. And talking to them afterwards, one of the jurors in particular, was -- I loved it. Every day he came in with a tie and a matching pocket scarf. I mean, he was -- he was very, very thoughtful in his going about what he was going to wear to court every day.

And even the women -- the women would traditionally wear more skirts or dresses than I saw pants, which is usually a phenomena you don't see in a long, protracted trial, where they just come in more and more relaxed by the day.

GROSS: If a jury does look bored -- if you see people fidgeting or yawning, what do you tell the lawyers who are arguing the case?

DIMITRIUS: Well, that's one of my roles in the courtroom is to watch the jurors; to watch the witnesses; and to see how they seem to be reacting. And it became very clear to me very quickly, particularly in the prosecution's case in chief, that this was being drawn on way too long. These people wanted to get on with it. They were in an environment, in a sequestered environment where they weren't able to see their families. I mean, these folks always had to have a deputy with them, no matter where they went, what they did.

And it's -- you know, imagine living in a hotel for six months and not having the comforts of home around you. And you add to that all of the lengthy questioning that went on in the case, and it was really clear to me that when our chance to come up and put on our case came on, that we do it in the shortest, most concise fashion to get in and to get out as quickly as we could.

GROSS: My guest is jury consultant Jo-Ellan Dimitrius. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

Jo-Ellan Dimitrius is my guest, and she's a jury consultant who has a new book called Reading People. And she was the jury consultant for the defense in the OJ Simpson trial and the Rodney King trial; McMartin preschool trial.

Now, let's talk about the Rodney King trial. In some ways, you were looking for jurors who might have had the opposite characteristics as the jurors in the OJ Simpson trial. In the OJ Simpson trial, working for the prosecution -- I mean for the defense -- you wanted the jurors to question the police, to be skeptical of the police. Whereas in the Rodney King trial, you wanted the jurors to believe the police.

DIMITRIUS: Right, we did. We were looking for those individuals who believe that law enforcement is the last step between democracy and anarchy. We wanted individuals who believed that there are unfortunate situations in which the police do have to step in, or our lives would be -- would be absolute chaos.

GROSS: Now, is it ever odd for you to be pulling for opposites? Like the difference between the Rodney King trial and the OJ Simpson trial -- knowing that the juror you want for one trial is the opposite of the juror that you want for the other?

DIMITRIUS: Is it strange? No, it's actually a challenge that I enjoy with any case that I work on is what are the biases, if you will, of the individuals that would indicate that that person would have a difficult time listening to your side of the case. And whether it's a criminal trial or a civil trial, it's always a challenge for me to find that out.

I mean, I'm a social scientist by training, so I enjoy the challenge of being able to find out what particular idiosyncrasies; what particular magazines the person may read or shows or experiences that may lead to the inability of that person to be a fair and impartial juror.

GROSS: Since you played such an important role in choosing the jurors on the Rodney King-Simi Valley trial, I'm wondering what your reaction was when their verdict was responded to with riots in Los Angeles. What went through your mind?

DIMITRIUS: Well, I was -- I was as disturbed by everybody else within Los Angeles County having -- living there and seeing the things that happen and seeing how people reacted to me personally. I mean, people really blamed me personally for what had happened, which I think was very, very inappropriate.

Unfortunately, because of some of the local politicians and the commentary that was made immediately following the trial that was, in my opinion, totally inappropriate -- it really charged up people within the black community and obviously we saw the outcome. And I might add that, gosh, probably a year later, is when I was actually working for the defense of the two men charged with the beating of Reginald Denney that happened as a result of the riots.

GROSS: And what were you looking for in those jurors?

DIMITRIUS: Well, in those jurors, what I was looking for were those people who would understand that the frustration of the black community may have led to the unfortunate circumstances that happened. And not necessarily condone, obviously, what happened, but understand it and at least be open to hearing what the defense was in that case, which was, you know, exactly that -- that the emotions, the sentiment of the community had just so filled these two young men that they had done something that was absolutely horrible in everyone's mind -- mine included, as was the Rodney King beating.

And you know, what's so important in the jury selection process is not just what it is that people say about their experiences and their biases, but to watch what it is that these people do in -- while sitting in the jury box. How do -- how they act with their appearances; how does it modify what it is that they actually say?

GROSS: Let's look at appearance for a second. In your book Reading People, you give your readers a lot of advice about how to size people up, in part by what they're wearing, how they look, how they comb their hair. For example, if somebody has a large bald spot on top of their head and they comb those few strands over the bald spot, you consider that to be revealing of certain characteristics. What does that tell you? And how might that come into play in choosing jurors?

DIMITRIUS: Well, that can tell you a number of things, but what comes to mind first with me, generally, is this is a man who's very concerned about vanity and will -- will sacrifice perhaps common sense for the vanity aspect of looking as though he's not getting old and going bald. Someone who lets one side of their hair -- a man who lets one side of their hair grow out -- you know, six inches longer than the other side -- simply to be able to wrap it over his head, perhaps hasn't stopped to think that the first big blast of wind that comes along is going to reveal that problem with vanity.

And if you've got a particular issue in a case in which that's a concern, that's something that I want to know. The same thing is true with a short haircut, say, for a man. Most people would look at that and they'd say: "Well, it might be just that he's trendy or perhaps that he has more of a creative flair."

Well, it could also mean that that person has a military or a paramilitary background. Or it could mean that perhaps they -- they've had the misfortune of going through chemotherapy and have lost a lot of their hair.

You can't see and determine any one of these factors without looking at the entire pattern of what the person presents. And it's not just their appearances; their body language. It's what they say; how they say it; their actions; and the environment in which you -- in which you see all of this. That's why you can't take any one characteristic and say: "Aha! I know that that person is more like to be from the military because they have short hair."

Now, if you add to that the fact that they have freshly polished shoes and perhaps they talk about "alighting" from the vehicle or "apprehending" the suspect, then you've got a pretty good clue that you're right on target; that in fact, it is somebody from a paramilitary background.

GROSS: You know, one hopes that the trial process leads us closer to the truth, and one could wonder: Does the kind of work that you're going now lead us closer to trial as theater as opposed to trial as a process to get to the bottom of what really happened?

DIMITRIUS: Well, I think unfortunately, what people in this country evaluate as typical of courtroom behavior was the OJ Simpson criminal trial. And I can assure you that that does not happen on a daily basis in courtrooms around this country; that justice is served on a regular basis.

And you know, it -- you're dealing with a system of advocacy. You're dealing with people who are committed -- the attorneys on both sides -- to representing their clients to the best of their ability. And there are those individuals, those attorneys, who are more flamboyant than others, that it may appear to be courtroom in the theater of the absurd. But I would say that the majority of cases that go on in this country are by individuals who are very committed and do so in a very professional and credible fashion.

GROSS: Well Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

DIMITRIUS: Thanks, Terry.

GROSS: Jo-Ellan Dimitrius is a jury consultant and author of the new book Reading People.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: Jo-Ellan Dimitrius
High: Jury consultant JO-ELLAN (pronounced "Jo-Ellen") DIMITRIUS. She's consulted in over 600 trials, including OJ Simpson's and Rodney King's. Dimitrius' company, Forensic Technologies International, uses techniques like random phone surveys to learn about public attitudes. In jury questionnaires and interviews, Dimitrius says he can get potential jurors to reveal their predispositions. In her new book, "Reading People: How to Understand People and Predict Their Behavior," (Random House) she discloses some of the tricks of her trade.
Spec: Lifestyle; Culture; Justice; Trials; Books; Authors
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Reading People
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JUNE 17, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 061702NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Vultures
Sect: Science
Time: 12:30

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Vultures -- in the Bible they were called "an abomination." Charles Darwin described the turkey vulture as a disgusting bird with its bald scarlet head formed to wallow in putridity. In art and literature, vultures are always the harbingers of imminent demise.

Nature writer Wayne Grady points all this out in the beginning of his new book, but he spends the rest of the book trying to undo the bad press vultures have received. His new book is called "Vulture: Nature's Ghastly Gourmet." It's filled with information that is as fascinating as it is unappetizing.

I asked Grady first about the place of the vulture in mythology.

WAYNE GRADY, AUTHOR, "VULTURE: GHASTLY GOURMET": Historically, it's occupied a very important part in Native American and Canadian mythology. It's a large bird, and most large animals are celebrated in mythology. And the California Condor is the prototype for the Thunderbird image in west coast native mythology.

In Europe, certainly, and in India, the bird has been -- is in a lot of the early mythology of India. They're known as the gatekeepers of hell because they, for obvious reasons I guess, I mean, they deal with death and dead things. And so it's natural to associate them with death and hell.

In India for the past 1,500 years or more, there's been a regular ritual ceremony in which dead bodies are exposed on mountaintops to vultures who come and eat them. It's called a "sky burial." It's a rather gruesome ritual, but it's -- it's been part of the mythology for centuries.

GROSS: I'm going to stop you right there. I don't know if you saw the movie "Kundun" -- the Martin Scorsese movie about the ...

GRADY: Ah, yes.

GROSS: ... Dalai Lama. But there's a scene at a Tibetan monastery in which one of the monks dies, and the monk is basically -- his body is basically chopped up into smaller pieces and left for the vultures to eat.

GRADY: Yes, that's the sky burial. And that takes place still today. I mean, it happens every day but Sunday, apparently. And the bodies are chopped up and ground up into small pieces. The bones are broken up and mixed with yak milk, I think, so that every part of the body is consumed by hordes of vultures that come down and hang around the area for that particular purpose.

GROSS: Is that a way -- what is the point of that, sky burial?

GRADY: I think there are two things. I mean, there's the philosophical point which is sort of becoming one with nature when you die. It's exactly the same as being buried in North America or Europe. You know, the body is decomposed and made to become one with the earth, in this case with a creature of the earth.

But the practical, I think, application in Tibet is that there's no soil up there. There's not six feet of soil at the top of the mountaintops. So that it's a way of disposing of corpses without causing disease.

GROSS: Vultures eat putrid, decaying corpses that no other animal would go near. I mean, other animals would get sick if they ate this. How come vultures don't get sick when they eat putrid corpses?

GRADY: Well, they have some kind of -- I don't really know the science of this -- but they have some kind of special juices in their intestinal tract that kills bacteria. They're actually -- I think people should be studying whatever it is inside a vulture that kills things like anthrax for example. There's a lot of talk about anthrax in the news these days, and weapons-grade anthrax.

There isn't any real antidote to anthrax. If a human comes down with that disease, there aren't too many things you can take to counteract the bacterial infection. But somehow, the vulture has something in its gut that kills anthrax, and we should probably be taking a look at it.

GROSS: This kind of gives them the edge when it comes to getting food ...
GRADY: Well, I ...

GROSS: ... 'cause they don't have a lot of competition in eating this stuff.

GRADY: Well, that's right. There's a real niche there for them. They're -- a lot of things do eat dead animals, but there aren't very many things that eat exclusively dead animals. For a vulture, the deader the better. And they have to have some kind of internal system for eating that stuff without getting sick.

GROSS: Would you describe how the vulture is physically designed to be able to eat dead animals?

GRADY: Well, the most obvious thing is the naked head and neck. They're -- one of the species, the turkey vulture, is so called because it, like a turkey or like a flamingo, it has no feathers on its neck or on its head; makes it look kind of weird as a bird. We're used to seeing birds covered all over in feathers. But vultures have no feathers from the shoulder up.

And that's an adaptation for -- to the kinds of -- the way they eat. I mean, they stick their heads into rather horrible places and they can sort of pull their heads out without bringing a lot of gore and stuff attached to their feathers.

And we mentioned the stomach juices that are able to digest bacteria. Their feet are -- are not adapted to grasping. For a long time, vultures were thought to be members of the same family as hawks and owls and eagles and things. But they're -- but unlike those other raptors, vultures cannot grasp onto a carcass and fly off with it. Their feet are particularly useful for tearing and rendering, but not for carrying.

So they have to stay pretty much where the carcass is -- where they find the carcass. They don't take it home with them as other raptors do.

GROSS: Is it coincidence that some of them are colored like blood and guts?

GRADY: Yes, it's probably coincidence. The coloration is probably more for sexual display than for -- than to remind them of what they eat.

GROSS: A sex and violence thing here.

GRADY: Yeah, yeah. The most colorful -- the king vulture is the most colorful of the vultures, and it is extraordinarily beautifully colored -- the red eye-ring and the blue and yellow on the head. They're quite pretty.

GROSS: I was fascinated to read that vultures have no voice box, so this is a bird without a song.

GRADY: It's a bird without a song, and a bird with a sense of smell. So there are two unusual bird-like qualities there. Yeah, they don't have a voice box, so they sort of -- they can click at one another and they do that during the mating ritual. But they don't -- they don't squawk or cry or sing or anything like -- that other birds do.

GROSS: How do vultures find the dead and dying corpses that they feed on?

GRADY: Well, two things -- turkey vultures and greater yellow-headed vultures have a sense of smell. And they're one of the very few -- probably, oh, two or three other species of birds in the bird kingdom, have a sense of smell -- and very, very highly developed. A turkey vulture can smell a rotting corpse from 1,000 feet in the air.

And they sort of cruise in the forests, in the forest canopy and in the open savannas, waiting to sort of catch a whiff of something. In fact, I read somewhere that natural gas line repairmen look for circling turkey vultures over a part of the territory where they know that there's a leak in the gas line, and because natural gas smells like rotting food, turkey vultures are often fooled by a gas leak. So line repairmen will look for circling vultures to tell them where there's a possible leak in the line.

And other vultures who have not developed a sense of smell will follow the turkey vultures, or the yellow-headed vultures, to a corpse. So you get -- you might sometimes get a situation where there's three different species of vultures circling over an area; two of species watching the turkey vulture to come down, and then as soon as they see a turkey vulture go down, they'll go down and sort of bump the turkey vulture off the carcass and take over. There's a very strict hierarchy of feeding in vulture-land, and turkey vultures are pretty close to the bottom.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: Do you find vultures beautiful?

GRADY: Oh, yeah I do. I find -- I find -- I didn't when I started working on this book. I must confess, I was not one of the vulture's big fans until I really sort of got to know from reading and talking to researchers and observing myself, got to know that they were actually a very interesting bird; very unique; have unique problems and have found unique solutions to the problems.

So I find them sort of, I guess, intellectually beautiful. Some of them are actually quite physically beautiful. I mentioned the king vulture earlier. The turkey vulture, with its bright red head and neck, is quite nice -- quite nice looking, too.

I find -- I quite like birds. I'm an amateur birder and spend a lot of time watching birds. And if you spend any time at all watching vultures in the air, particularly, you have to admit that they're an absolutely beautiful animal to watch. They -- the way they circle on the air waves, you know, the warm air thermals, they just glide and they can glide up there for hours with hardly ever moving a wing to propel themselves. They just sort of ride those thermals.

They have extraordinarily large wing-span for the body weight, so they can hang-glide for literally hours and hours -- traveling hundreds and hundreds of kilometers with maybe flapping their wings two or three times.

GROSS: We're going to hear from one of the people whose tried to save the California Condor.

GRADY: Yeah.

GROSS: And before we hear from him, I want to thank you very much, Wayne Grady, for talking with us.

GRADY: Well, thanks for having me. I enjoyed it.

GROSS: Wayne Grady is the author of "Vulture: Nature's Ghastly Gourmet." We'll talk with the Los Angeles Zoo's vulture expert after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

Mike Wallace shares my last guest's admiration for vultures. In fact, he's been nicknamed "Dr. Condor." He's the condor or vulture specialist at the Los Angeles Zoo, and leads a recovery program to bring back the California Condor from the brink of extinction through captive breeding and protection of the condor's habitat.

The program has raised condor's in a protected environment, then released them into the wild. There are currently 37 California Condors at the zoo.

I can't think of vultures without remembering countless westerns in which a guy is crawling through the desert dying of thirst, while the vultures fly above in anticipation. I asked Mike Wallace if vultures are indifferent to people who aren't dead or dying.

MIKE WALLACE, VULTURE SPECIALIST, LOS ANGELES ZOO: No, they pay attention to everything in the environment because the behavior of how an animal interacts with its environment may mean food. These birds are so keen to their changes in their environment that they can tell when an animal, including a human being, is in trouble and likely to provide food for them down the line if they're not lucky.

GROSS: So they really know if you're about to die, huh?

LAUGHTER

WALLACE: Well, all I can talk about is -- directly is anecdotal evidence I have from South America, where I was doing a carcass survey along a very deserted Peruvian beach. And the turkey and black vultures would sit and wait for the, what we call "guano" birds. In this case, it was pelicans I remember most distinctly. And there'd be a -- maybe 1,000 birds out there, and whenever I'd see the turkey or black vultures up on the sand dunes, I knew there was an injured bird out there, because they were watching.

And everything would flush as I came by except for that bird with a droopy wing that would seem otherwise perfectly healthy and waddle down the -- down the beach. But the vultures would pick up and waddle along with him, sort of just waiting their time.

GROSS: You're raising baby condors at the zoo and taking some of them back into the wild. Are there things that they don't know how to do in the wild because they weren't brought up there?

WALLACE: Absolutely. They need to learn how to be condors, and it's not as simple as the situation might be in other birds. Condors apprentice for four to five, six years under the population to learn how to compete as adult condors. They have to learn where the carrion is in any particular environment. It's not always the same, of course. So what we do is we first have to get the birds to learn what kind of carrion they might be experiencing out there. So we'll give them those kinds of things in captivity prior to release.

They need to learn how to fly as young birds, of course, and so many times we'll give them a large flight pen to exercise and learn how to fly up to higher perches. And on release day, they'll test their wings. They may even not feed for several days -- up to 10 or so days until they get hungry enough to actually go for the food.

And eventually, they will be coming back to this carrion. Now, we'll move those in the night time. We'll be placing the food out for them. We'll move those dead calves or goats or deer or whatever, into different areas in the cover of night. We'll place them in a new location so they have to look for it every day.

And this starts them learning how to forage; that is, cuing in on the turkey vultures, ravens, and other activities of other scavengers in the area.

GROSS: Have you ever had to protect yourself against diseases that vultures can spread because they deal with, you know, putrefying matter?

WALLACE: Absolutely. In fact, some of the ranchers in Florida where I was working with black and turkey vultures used to think the black vulture was poisonous because any time they got a scratch or a bite during their lifetime, it became infected. And that's very, very true. They're working with -- these vultures are feeding on animals that have all sorts of pathogens that don't affect them, but certainly affect us as mammals.

And when we are handling our condors or especially in the wild, or even in captivity, and there's a puncture, we're sure to wash it out with disinfectant because there's a high likelihood that it will become infected if we don't.

GROSS: How about the smell that vultures carry? Does that bother you? Are you adjusted to it?

WALLACE: Well, the smell of the feathers of condors is almost pleasing to me. It's not -- it's not of a bird that hasn't recently fed or you know, that hasn't been around a very putrid carcass. They don't really carry the smell with them that much. But they have a distinctive smell.

When we do handle them, of course they urinate on their -- or defecate on their legs to keep cool. If they are handled, very often they'll regurgitate which is a defense mechanism. And that regurgitant ...

GROSS: Is that to like scare their enemies away from the -- with the odor?

WALLACE: Well, there's a few hypotheses. I think it's almost a diversionary tactic because many of the fights that they might be getting into is with another condor. And many times, they will -- they will -- one thought is that they're reducing their weight. So if they're carrying a kilo and a half or three pounds of food in their crop and they dump this food immediately as they're being pursued -- one thought is that they're just, you know, reducing their weight so they can fly faster.

But I -- I've noticed some behavior out in the wild that leads me to believe that they're just throwing out some diversion. Because that is -- is actually a food offering. It's a distraction for a pursuing bird that will go for the food instead of many times pursue the other bird.

In Florida when I was working with turkey vultures, I had the feeling that the smell of regurgitant as they're feeding young on the ground in the brush -- it amazed me that the eggs and young of these birds were not taken by raccoons and many of the many predators -- the bobcats, the dogs, the foxes that are in the area.

And I did some experiments to see just how these animals might react to a choice of tuna fish or tuna fix mix or regurgitant. And they always avoided the regurgitant.

GROSS: You mean the other animals -- not the vultures but the other animals that might have eaten the baby vultures -- didn't like the regurgitant.

WALLACE: Exactly. They just think in terms of "well, that things so old I don't want to get near it; that it's beyond my capability of digesting.

GROSS: Right. Let me ask, if you put like some tuna fish before a vulture, will the vulture eat it?

WALLACE: Oh sure. Yeah, they -- they can digest some ... in fact, some of the vultures, the turkey and blacks, have been known to digest vegetation. Pumpkins and I think there was a case in the south of sweet potatoes that were eaten by black vultures.

GROSS: So they don't have -- they're not confined to carcasses?

WALLACE: No, but they -- they do -- they're pretty much confined to carcasses, but there's some rotting vegetation that gives off the consistency ...

GROSS: Right.

WALLACE: ... and smell that might make them think it's good food. And as far as I know, their digestion can handle just about anything.

GROSS: Well, I'm really working up an appetite.

LAUGHTER

WALLACE: It is lunch time, isn't it.

GROSS: My guest is Mike Wallace, the curator of conservation and science at the Los Angeles Zoo. He's an expert on vultures. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

Back with Mike Wallace, the vulture expert at the Los Angeles Zoo, where he leads a program to bring back the California Condor from the brink of extinction.

Now I know you've had experiences working in Florida and in Peru with vultures there. Any kind of vulture adventures you can share with us?

WALLACE: Oh, many, many, but some of them a little too strange to put on the air. When you're working with these animals, it's -- you sort of tune out the smells; you tune out the notion of -- because you're working with it every day and you see it as this is just the way the animals behave. And I remember that we were using goats and burros that were either sold to us or picked up as road kill or even hunted, in Peru in order to feed the released birds and also bring in wild birds so we could trap them; put transmitters on them and learn their behavior.

And very often I'd find myself -- our crew that was living out in the middle of the wilds in the desert, and we would -- we'd seek out this protein ourselves and we'd take the first cut off one of the animals if it was fresh and then put the other remaining part of that burro out for the -- as a carcass for the condors.

And I remember distinctly sitting in blinds around mid-day watching them feed on a dead carcass out there, and realizing it was lunchtime and I was hungry and I started eating. My sandwich was from the same animal that was out there being fed upon by the -- a little bit fresher, mind you -- but fed upon by the condors themselves.

We end up having to live with the birds, and sometimes (unintelligible).

GROSS: "When in Rome" as they say.

LAUGHTER

WALLACE: We would act like them, sometimes. Yeah.

But no, it's -- when -- when people ask us about our success with the breeding program, I guess the only answer I have is that you have to know as much as you possibly can about a species. And Mike Phillips (ph) with the wolves and Brian Miller (ph) with the black-footed ferrets -- we all tend to end up doing the same things. You study the literature. You study the animals themselves. You live with the animals.

And through the 20 or so years I've been working with birds of prey and vultures, it cannot be substituted by having the animals around you -- just as you know your house cat or your dog.

GROSS: I was reading an article in the Los Angeles Times about your program, and someone who opposed it -- a resident of Utah was quoted a saying "the condor is not a majestic bird, but a common buzzard which lives on road kill. If you think that we, or any tourist, would be excite to see these birds gnawing away on a dead animal carcass along the road, you are very mistaken."

What do you think about that?

WALLACE: Well, everyone has their opinion. But the -- even at the L.A. Zoo, and I'm sure at the other facilities, I get weekly calls about people -- from people wondering where they can see them in the environment?; Is it possible to see them at the zoo?; How can they help the program?

And I think that there's a growing majority out there that has a different sense of appreciation of wildlife and I can tell you from my own direct experience, and not just because I'm biased about the species, but the -- the feeling of being out there in what we think of as wilderness and then have this majestic shadow making us look up into the sky and hearing the wind through the wings of a nine and a half, nearly ten-foot wingspan is something that is very breathtaking.

And I know there's a lot of people who appreciate wildlife in a different way and don't see it as a hazard or hindrance to their daily life, that have a different opinion.

GROSS: Now, I understand that one of your hobbies is hang-gliding.

WALLACE: Mmm-hm.

GROSS: Does it make you feel like a bird?

WALLACE: Well, one of the benefits that I never realized from hang-gliding is that condors are basically biological hang-gliders themselves. That's how they get around. They're very large. They rely on thermals and slope soaring to move from one place to another; to flap is to waste energy, and they try to avoid that. And they certainly can use powered flight, but it's very energy-consuming, so they are trying to soar from one place to another.

Now, as a hang-glider pilot I learned that if you want to move from one area to another, that's how you mimic. You mimic the soaring birds. You rise to the top of a thermal and then go into a speedy dash, hopefully to the next thermal, and then go up in that and continue on to move across the landscape. That's exactly how the condors move.

And an immense benefit I feel I've gained from doing that myself is to learn just how hard it is and what the birds are going through up there. When we release young condors, I can see how clumsy they are and watch their mistakes as they're going up and missing the thermal and falling out of it, and miscalculating.

It gives me, I think, a better insight. And as the winds change -- here in California we have what we call the Santa Ana winds, which is a direct reversal of the wind flow across these mountains. And if I -- well, of course, through the weather forecast, I'll know when that's about to happen. So I can predict which routes the birds are going to take based on the wind flow.

And I think being a hang-glider pilot has helped me immensely with that kind of prediction. And it's almost like opening up your eyes and getting another sense of how these birds are interacting with the environment.

GROSS: What's it like for you to spend so much time trying to save an animal -- to save a bird that is -- that has such a bad reputation, you know?

LAUGHTER

WALLACE: Well you know, you have to understand where that reputation comes from. And there's -- what was a fascinating realization on my part working with vultures in Florida for my masters work, was that these birds have very little known about them.

GROSS: Mmm-hm.

WALLACE: And yet they're very, very fascinating behaviorally. And I have this hypothesis that, you know, in the early times of ornithology was in vogue throughout this part of this century, that you tend to think of the little old ladies in tennis shoes becoming the first -- maybe outcast becoming interested in birds. And it was the brightly colored, the beautiful songs -- those kinds of birds tended to get the attention first. And then as people ran out of things to do with them, they went on to other species.

And I think the vultures were the last on the list because they're so nasty to deal with. I mean, if you try to work with the young, they bite you, cause infections; they regurgitate; they smell; they have no pretty song to them at all. So I think they were the last of the birds to be appreciated, and purely on a basis. Once we get over our bias of how they look, they're just fascinating birds to work with.

GROSS: Well Mike Wallace, I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

WALLACE: Oh, you're very welcome.

GROSS: Mike Wallace is the curator of conservation and science at the Los Angeles Zoo.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: Wayne Grady; Mike Wallace
High: The truth about vultures, with WAYNE GRADY and MIKE WALLACE. Grady's new book, "Vulture: Ghastly Gourmet," (Sierra Club Books) describes in words and photographs the life of the vulture. WALLACE is the Los Angeles Zoo's vulture specialist. He is the Curator of Conservation and Science at the zoo, as well as being the Condor Species Survival Program Coordinator for the American Zoo and Aquarium Association.
Spec: Animals; Birds; Vultures; Los Angeles Zoo; Books; Authors; Lifestyle; Culture; Science
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Vultures
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.