A king eider sea duck tackles a prickly dinner of sea urchin on a lake in Batsfjord, Norway in the last decade of August 2024. The drake’s breeding plumage consists of a distinctive powder-blue head and neck, orange frontal lobe and a red bill. (Photo by Mia Surakka/Solent News)

“Sky burial or ritual dissection was once a common funerary practice in Tibet wherein a human corpse is cut in specific locations and placed on a mountaintop, exposing it to the elements or the mahabhuta and animals – especially to birds of prey. The location of the sky burial preparation and place of execution are understood in the Vajrayana traditions as charnel grounds. In Tibet the practice is known as jhator, which literally means, «giving alms to the birds»”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A burial master chops bones of a body to feed vultures during a celestial burial ceremony on April 19, 2006 in Dari County of Guoluo Prefecture, Qinghai Province, northwest China. Celestial burial is a traditional funeral of Tibetan people, which began in the 7th century. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

Finding just the right spot above the clouds at Camp 1 on Ama Dablam, Danuru Sherpa uses his iPhone to catch up with friends and family. Even at 18,500 feet (5,654 meters), climbers here can check their email and other dispatches from the world below. (Photo by Aaron Huey/National Geographic)

The civilised world lies on its knees, a sickness wracking its body. The affliction causes a necrotising of tissues so perfectly uniform in distribution that victims take on the appearance of corpses long before death occurs due to organ failure or secondary infections. ...

Hostesses pose in front of a Suzuki Ignis car at the European Motor Show in Brussels, Belgium, January 13, 2017. (Photo by Francois Lenoir/Reuters)

A masked Burundian protester faces soldiers in front of a burning barricade during an anti-government demonstration against President Pierre Nkurunziza's bid for a third term in the capital Bujumbura, Burundi, 25 May 2015. Street protests continued on 25 May as the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the killing of the leader of the oppsition party Union for Peace and Development (UPD) Zedi Feruzi who opposed Nkurunziza's bid. (Photo by Dai Kurokawa/EPA)

In this November 19, 2015 photo, Ester Melendez feeds banana porridge to her nine-month-old daughter Dina, in Pichiquia, an Ashaninka indigenous community in Peru's Junin region. Incursions and assaults by loggers, miners, colonists and leftist guerrillas have reduced the lands of the Ashaninka people in the Peruvian Amazon, leaving many of the 97,000 members of the group malnourished, despite efforts by the government and independent organizations to help. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

CHINA: Customers eat at a restaurant as a cooked pig sits on a cart on the street outside in Hong Kong, China, December 12, 2016. (Photo by David Gray/Reuters)