Kentucky Meat Shower: What Caused the Bizarre Incident in 1876?

A bizarre rainshower happened in 1876 that left one witness and the whole world who heard the story scratching their head -- it rained hunks of meat.

Kentucky Meat Shower

In Bath County, Kentucky, the sky was clear, and the sun shone when what looked like big chunks of meat started falling from the heavens. Though it lasted only a few minutes, witnesses, publications, and scientists have debated its enigmatic explanation for decades. The "Kentucky Meat Shower" incident was exactly as horrible as it sounds, and there are even more gruesome hypotheses as to what went wrong.

A farmwife saw the incident happen, and the bits of meat were all over her yard enough to, as it was reported at the time, "fill a horse wagon full."

The cause of the meat rain was a mystery to the people at the time. They made educated guesses as to what kind of meat it might be. Some neighbors were bold enough to try the beef to identify it, with guesses ranging from mutton to bear flesh.

However, the residents of Olympia Springs, where the meat fell, could not determine how it happened even after tasting it. Samples like the one given to Transylvania University were maintained and distributed to experts nationwide.

Still, the interest petered out before the scientists could offer their theories. It wasn't until Kurt Gohde, an expert on the meat showers and art professor at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, uncovered the most probable reason behind the bizarre incident.

Why Did It Rain Meat In Kentucky?

According to Gohde, the meat that rained on that fateful day was vulture vomit. Per Joe Walston, the Vice President for Field Programs at the Wildlife Conservation Society, "meat is heavy," so if a vulture wants to take off quickly and shed some weight, it will vomit.

Vultures have highly acidic stomachs, which let them digest anything they eat, including partially decayed carcasses. Therefore, they rarely vomit from illness. However, vultures tend to overeat because they never know when they will get their next meal.

This implies that they must wait to digest what they consume after feeding. However, if anything frightens them and they need to take off fast, they throw up to lessen the weight and will even throw up while taking off, if necessary.

According to Walston, the notion that the meat showers were caused by the vomit of a bunch of startled, freshly fed vultures was highly credible and made sense, given our understanding of vultures. Gohde added that it was plausible considering the meat condition and the type of tissue found in the sample examined.

It's not all cut into uniform pieces like it was with a meat cutter; instead, some of the pieces are ripped. Furthermore, it makes sense because no one dared to predict what animal it originated from when scientists later examined it under a microscope. However, they saw that lung tissue and cartilage were present.

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