When geoecologist Steffen Zuther and his colleagues arrived in central Kazakhstan to monitor the calving of one herd of saigas, a critically endangered, steppe-dwelling antelope, veterinarians in the area had already reported dead animals on the ground.
"But since there happened to be die-offs of limited extent during the last years, at first we were not really alarmed," Zuther, the international coordinator of the Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative, told Live Science.
But within four days, the entire herd — 60,000 saiga — had died. As veterinarians and conservationists tried to stem the die-off, they also got word of similar population crashes in other herds across Kazakhstan. By early June, the mass dying was over.
Are mass-die-offs like these indications of stress in the larger ecosystem?
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Thursday September 03 2015, @09:47PM
Yeah, no... sorry, that was me. Had the burrito for lunch.
My bad.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Techwolf on Thursday September 03 2015, @10:34PM
*burp* Sorry, me and my friends had a pretty big feast there. :-)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @10:37PM
The antelope burrito?
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Friday September 04 2015, @02:10PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos#1986_disaster [wikipedia.org]
By the way, where were you in 1986? Hmmm, I wonder.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday September 03 2015, @11:40PM
Are mass-die-offs like these indications of stress in the larger ecosystem?
Shouldn't we let the scientists on the ground determine this rather than speculating from half a world away?
Stress usually doesn't kill entire herds, but disease does.
Digging deeper in the links we find:
Because the researchers were on the ground at the time of the die-off, they were able to take detailed tissue samples from the dead animals. These necropsies revealed that bacterial toxins from a few species of pathogen had caused bleeding in all of the animals' internal organs.
The bacteria implicated — particularly one called Pasteurella — is often found in ruminants and rarely causes harm unless their immune system has already been weakened by something else. And genetic analysis suggested this was a garden-variety pathogenic form of the microbe, which has never caused such a rapid, stunning and complete crash in a population before.
Other than a cold, hard winter followed by a spring with lots of lush vegetation and lots of standing water on the ground, there wasn't much unusual in the conditions this year, biologists say.
The story reads like a history of the Plague (black death), and the bumper crop of fleas waiting to hitch rides on wagon train animals because their preferred hosts didn't survive the winter. I seem to remember posting a story about that some time ago [soylentnews.org].
But I'll wait for the official paper.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2015, @03:40AM
I told her to stop sticking dumb questions. Dumbass
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2015, @02:59PM
"Shouldn't we let the scientists on the ground determine this rather than speculating from half a world away?"
Probably but who cares. Though I'm not the original poster we're just talking. People can talk and speculate. This isn't a scientific journal. It's a discussion board.
"The bacteria implicated ... rarely causes harm unless their immune system has already been weakened by something else."
So perhaps 'stress in the larger ecosystem' (yes, that's a broad term) caused immunodeficient antelope which caused them to be more susceptible to disease. Stress to environment -> stress to antelope (perhaps it affected the quality of food supply, weather conditions, etc...) -> disease. Yes, a bunch of speculation but hey this is a discussion board where people should be able to discuss things. It's not a scientific journal. Even if it's wrong it's not like it's the end of the world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2015, @06:27PM
Hmm... could be some sort of environmentally triggered epiphyte toxin in the grasses they eat, that just happens to have hit all at once, in a large area.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Pav on Friday September 04 2015, @12:33AM
...they run faster than any natural predator, can breed after one year, and give birth to one, two or even three calves at a time.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2015, @12:48AM
Maybe it is the dying.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Friday September 04 2015, @05:07PM
...they run faster than any natural predator,
How about a bullet? Almost every species of animals that has gone extinct or became endangered in the last few centuries, is because of man. Either because deliberate killing, or destruction of their environment, or similar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon [wikipedia.org]
There used to be 5 billion pigeons like that in America. Flocks would blot out the sun, for days on end. Then people killed them, every last one, on industrial scale.
To me it's more amazing we have things living naturally that are larger than a cockroach. But maybe in next 100 years, the only place someone will be able to actually find a wolf or tiger is in a video.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday September 04 2015, @01:00AM
My kids are into sheep and goats. The daughter in law has been workng with them all her life. Their digestive systems are easily upset, and we've lost animals for unexplainable reasons. Little to nothing upsets them, and when their digestive system is out of whack, it is often fatal.
To make things more complicated, different plants are highly desired in one season of the year, and fatal in another season.
Fragile little beasts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2015, @02:45AM
I remember reading about mustard used as fodder but it must be harvested before it blooms because in that stage it turns poisonous.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2015, @03:07PM
I remember reading somewhere, I think it was here, that plants can detect when under attack (and adjacent plants can 'hear' when other plants are being eaten) and they release chemicals to deter predators and warn other plants to do the same.
I found it, it was in the comments of one of the threads
Posted by bob_super (1357)
"I read something at least 25 years ago about some trees in the savanna releasing chemicals when goats eat their leaves, and the trees downstream starting to produce toxic chemicals when they perceive these chemicals.
Herd protection, in a sense."
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?threshold=0&highlightthresh=0&mode=improvedthreaded&commentsort=0&op=Change&sid=8688#post_comment [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday September 04 2015, @09:44PM
I remember this one time... at band camp...
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday September 04 2015, @02:48AM
Being familiar with sheep -- yeah, they can be insanely tough yet drop dead for no discernible reason. But cyanogenic glycoside generation by native grasses is the most likely explanation here -- it's not an unknown phenomenon by any means, and can kill an entire population in very short order. (See my link in another post.)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2015, @04:54PM
Isn't the natural order of these things, a cycle of some sort.
There is plenty of food/plants.
Animals eat food.
Animal population goes up
Food population goes down
There is little food.
Animals die
Plants grow back
There is plenty of food
...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Friday September 04 2015, @02:44AM
I'd guess it was some variant of this phenomenon, which has been known to kill whole herds in a very short timeframe:
http://essmextension.tamu.edu/plants/plant/johnsongrass/ [tamu.edu]
"Sorghum forages under the stress of rapid growth or drought generate cyanogenic glycosides, which are converted to free cynanide in the rumen. Free cyanide may be present in freshly frosted plants. Most losses from johnsongrass are caused by cyanide poisoning. All domestic animals are susceptible to cyanide; ruminants are the most susceptible."
As I recall but couldn't find info about offhand, the phenomenon can be sufficiently short-term as to be difficult to ID and impossible to predict, but might be precipitated by an unseasonably early freeze.
It wouldn't be at all surprising to get some imbalance in gut flora as the animal dies and conditions therein change, hence an overgrowth of otherwise-ordinary bacteria (like pasteurella).
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2015, @04:06AM
You could try reading the article, which has this to say:
and
Or, you could Google around and find other articles [eurasianet.org] that would tell you this:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2015, @03:33PM
“The cause of death of the saigas is hemorrhagic septicemia,” Steffen Zuther, a German researcher and the international coordinator of the Astana-based Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative, told the TV channel.
Hemorrhagic septicemia — which scientists believe was rapidly spread across the steppe by ticks in May — is a form of pasteurellosis, a disease that killed nearly 12,000 saigas in a 2010 epidemic.
Mad Antelope Disease
I told you those mothers against drunk antelopes would become a problem...