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60,000 Antelope Died In 4 Days, and No One Knows Why

Posted by Soulskill on from the it-was-the-one-armed-man dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The Saiga antelope has been hunted to near extinction. They've been put on the endangered species list, and they play a vital role in the ecosystems around Russia, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan, where their grazing helps get rid of fallen plant matter, which is prevented from decomposing by the cold temperatures. But earlier this year, a huge die-off hit the Saiga antelope herd in Kazakhstan, felling over 120,000 of them in a few short weeks. Scientists say an entire group of 60,000 died within a four-day span. The cause of this die-off is still a mystery. The researchers suspect some sort of bacteria, and early on pointed to Pasteurella strains. But those bacteria don't usually cause this much damage unless something else has weakened the antelope. "There is nothing so special about it. The question is why it developed so rapidly and spread to all the animals," one researcher said. They're looking into environmental factors, but nothing else seems too far out of the ordinary.

7 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. As they say by codeButcher · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... that buck stopped there.

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    1. Re:As they say by DarkOx · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Its irrelevant. By the time you conclusively determine whatever killed the beasts isn't harmful to humans the meat will most likely have spoiled.

      Lots of bacteria that might be destroyed by cooking fills the host will harmful toxins that may not be destroyed by cooking before the host dies. By the time you work all this out it will be to late for other reasons.

      Basic survival rule: if you don't know what killed it, scratch eating it off the list of possibilities.

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  2. Graaaaains by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is how The Pronking Dead starts, you know.

  3. Re:Now we need... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    By the sounds of it the "genetic diversity" between your parents wasn't much to talk about either.

  4. They were raptured by jfdavis668 · · Score: 5, Funny

    These deer were actually God's chosen people, and have been raptured. We all have to live through the end of days.

  5. Not saying it was aliens but... by penandpaper · · Score: 5, Funny

    It was aliens.

  6. Re:Now we need... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Many extinct species would beg to differ.

    How can they do that? They're extinct.

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