Reindeer often react to stormy weather by huddling together, which likely explains how so many of them were killed. When the seasons change, thousands of reindeer migrate across the plateau. As herd animals, reindeer typically travel together in large groups. “We don’t know if it was one or more lighting strikes”, a spokesman for the Norwegian Nature Inspectorate told Norwegian news agency NTB. “But it happened in one moment”.
Advertisement
Officials surmised that an extremely high discharge of electricity from the storm on Friday afternoon – and the interaction of the lightning with the earth and water – had electrocuted the animals.
In addition, the fact that reindeer have no safe place to retreat during an electrical storm can turn an entire herd into a target, Dwyer said.
There’s now an ongoing investigation into how bad the spread of this disease in the local reindeer population is, and Knutsen said the corpses of the lightning victims will provide a considerable sample for analysis.
“We’re going to decide soon whether to let nature run its own course or whether we will do something”, says Knutsen.
With no comparable mass-death-by-lightning-strike on record, the question is how so many animals could have been killed at once. In photos released by the agency, the animals are visible in piles up to 100 yards apart.
MORE than 300 wild reindeer have been killed by lightning in central Norway.
Advertisement
In the US, cattle, elk and other animals are far more likely to die from lightning than people are. In 2005, 68 cows were killed in Australia by a single bolt, according to a report by CNN.
