Scientists Found a 650-year-old Shoe in a Vulture Nest Along with Dozens of Other Curiosities

Researchers in Spain were left feeling a mixture of confusion and intrigue when they found several straw sandals embedded in a bearded vulture nest.

They didn’t know it at the time, but it was over 6 centuries ago that a bearded vulture flew from its hunting grounds into a sheltered cave nesting site and dropped off a sandal called an Agobía.

There it lay, fulfilling who-can-say what purpose, until ecologist Antoni Margalida pulled it and many other human artifacts, some as old, others younger, from the abandoned nest.

Vultures, like raptors of all kinds, tend to reuse nests generation after generation. A study was published on the discovery and was picked up by National Geographic, which went on to explain that one golden eagle nest was documented to be 20 feet in depth from parent