The Animals Have Had It

We saw some pretty bizarre animal behavior last year, and it is only getting more strange this year. In previous posts on our blog, we talked about the plague of locusts in Africa destroying a significant percentage of crops. We also covered that sharks will sometimes attack the deep sea internet cables.

We previously did not cover a disruption in the migration pattern of birds in the US that resulted in the mass death of migratory birds. Around September of last year, hundreds of thousands of birds died during their migration through New Mexico. While the underlying reason for the massive bird deaths was never truly uncovered, there were some theories as to why this occurred. One of the theories was the effect of the out of control California wildfires; the volume of smoke and destruction could have forced the birds to migrate before they were ready. Some birds certainly suffered from the results of smoke inhalation while others may have had to take a different path and met their untimely demise that way. That sounds a bit crazy until you recall that last year, the wild fires in western parts of the US were so bad that the smoke could be seen as far as Colorado and the skies in parts of California had turned a deep orange for a span of time. In fact, there were even concerns about shipping to where goods would not be delivered to certain addresses within a certain vicinity of the fires. In addition, there were several calls to action for volunteer and relief organizations to help contain the fires and support those who were displaced. Taking this into consideration, it is no surprise that the wildlife in California and surrounding areas were negatively impacted during that time.

Speaking of strange, the weird animal behavior is not over. Just this month, some of the cities and towns in Southern Australia have been overrun by an ongoing plague of mice. That's right, for once this is not a story about a new man-eating species that has emerged from the depths of Australia to discourage people from travel - no opossum eating spiders this time. The increase in the mouse population is so large that it has some articles describing the hoards as "carpets" of mice. Some suspect that this boom in the mouse population is due to the rain early last year. Potentially, that rain led to a breeding frenzy that when followed by a drought helped the populations flourish. The situation is so bad that some people have been driven out of their homes and vehicles and will need to replenish their livestock because the mice are eating everything in sight. To top things off, there is some additional risk to these large mice populations. Mice are known to make nests in hay, where their feces can cause illness and even death in livestock that ingest it. So even if they aren't eating animals alive, they are killing them by proxy. Mice are known to carry and spread leptospira, a potentially fatal bacterial disease that causes leptospirosis. Without treatment, leptospirosis can lead to kidney damage, meningitis (inflammation of the membrane around the brain and spinal cord), liver failure, respiratory distress, and even death - which is likely what makes the livestock sick in the first place. Welcome to the 2021, aka 2020 extended, where weird is the new normal.