Turtle guts and vulture vomit: Biologists debate the worst smells they’ve ever encountered

Back in March, David Steen, a biologist who specializes in research involving amphibians and reptiles, tweeted out a quick, cheeky request to all his scientist followers: “RT if you’re a field biologist and you’ve ever asked yourself, ‘Why do I smell bad?’” Along with 167 of the retweets he was craving, Steen provoked a few fascinating and truly disgusting anecdotes of the things that were making his colleagues smell awful. If you’re the kind of person who might get squeamish from just reading about nightmarish odors and sights, you might want to turn back. This stuff is next-level gross.

The nauseating story-swapping died down until a Twitter user who’s particularly interested in exact descriptions of animal smells replied to Steen and reopened the floodgates that had been holding back a torrent of rotting flesh and bodily fluids. Who would have guessed that the puke of a creature that eats decomposing carcasses would smell horrible?

Anything involving dead turtles was the most common response, by far:

This poor PhD candidate might take the vomit-inducing cake, though:

[via The Verge]