Up to 300 dead birds have been found on the side of an Alabama highway in the latest mass animal death to be reported. The bodies of the birds, identified as grackles, were found strewn along the I-65 highway. Grackles have also been found dead in their hundreds recently in Arkansas, Louisiana and Kentucky. The Alabama deaths are just the latest in a series of mass animal deaths around the world that have spurred conspiracy theories all over the internet. First, the blackbirds fell out of the sky on New Year's Eve in Arkansas. Then it was two million fish in the Chesapeake Bay, 150 tons of red tilapia in Vietnam, 40,000 crabs in Britain and other places across the world. Blogs connected the deadly dots, joking about the 'aflockalypse' while others saw real signs of something sinister, either biblical or environmental. The reality, say biologists, is that these mass die-offs happen all the time and usually are unrelated. (Daily Mail)
Friday 14 January 2011
Now 300 dead birds fall from the sky in Alabama (how much longer can scientists keep saying this is normal?)
Up to 300 dead birds have been found on the side of an Alabama highway in the latest mass animal death to be reported. The bodies of the birds, identified as grackles, were found strewn along the I-65 highway. Grackles have also been found dead in their hundreds recently in Arkansas, Louisiana and Kentucky. The Alabama deaths are just the latest in a series of mass animal deaths around the world that have spurred conspiracy theories all over the internet. First, the blackbirds fell out of the sky on New Year's Eve in Arkansas. Then it was two million fish in the Chesapeake Bay, 150 tons of red tilapia in Vietnam, 40,000 crabs in Britain and other places across the world. Blogs connected the deadly dots, joking about the 'aflockalypse' while others saw real signs of something sinister, either biblical or environmental. The reality, say biologists, is that these mass die-offs happen all the time and usually are unrelated. (Daily Mail)
