The Norwegian Environment Agency has released eerie images showing a jumble of reindeer carcasses scattered across a small area on the Hardangervidda mountain plateau.
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Lightning has apparently killed some 323 reindeer in Norway, according to the country’s Environment Directorate. Five animals were still alive and had to be euthanised.
Kjartan Knutsen, from Norway’s nature surveillance agency, said that to see this many reindeer struck down by lightning is unprecedented.
As the seasons change, thousands of reindeer migrate across the plateau, moving between drier lands in the east, where they graze on lichens, and wetter lands in the west, where they breed.
So how exactly does a lightning strike kill 323 reindeer?
They were apparently killed during a strong storm on Friday, later found by wildlife officers sent to supervise hunting activity in the Hardangervidda mountain plateau.
“First, there’s a direct strike – this is what most people think of when they think of lightning – that hits the tree or maybe the ground nearby”, John Jensenius, a lightning safety expert from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), told Angela Chen at The Verge. Local officials will be revisiting the area to study the animals further, and a decision will be made once test results are available.
But if it stretches out a leg or a wing, or touches another wire, the current suddenly has somewhere to go, and through the bird it zips.
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Lightning is wild and attractive, but also very unsafe – especially to reindeer, it seems.
