Officials say the animals are easily frightened and often move in large herds during inclement weather.
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Kjartan Knutsen, from Norway’s nature surveillance agency, said that to see this many reindeer struck down by lightning is unprecedented. Of the storm’s violence, he said, “We’ve never had anything like this with lightning”.
Following several strong storms on Friday, over 300 reindeer were found dead on the Hardangervidda plateau, a national park in Southern Norway.
On Monday the Norwegian Environment Agency released photos of the carnage. Of the 323 reindeer killed, five were euthanized due to their injuries, agency officials said.
So how could something like this happen?
“We’ve heard about animals being struck by lightning and killed, but I don’t remember hearing about lightning killing animals on this scale before”, spokesman for the Norwegian Nature Inspectorate Knut Nylend said in a local news report.
Hardanger was extremely wet on Friday, helping conduct lighetning.
“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”, Jensenius said.
And not only did the herd’s instinct to huddle together backfire on them, their own bodies rendered them the flawless receptacles for all that electricity.
But if you’re looking for a silver lining in this grisly event, there is one. kinda.
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The entangled mass of dead reindeer also evoked images of another freakish incident in 2015, when an entire herd of 60,000 critically endangered antelopes mysteriously dropped dead in a matter of four days on the steppes of Kazakhstan.
