nature weird events on animal numbers.pdf
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FEATURESHome News Blog Video collections Wildlife Prehistoric life Places Contact
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3 January 2012Last updated at 11:53
As the clock struck 12 and Auld Lang Syne rang out, many
breathed a sigh of relief that the new year had arrived without a
hitch.
This time last year however, residents of a small town in the US
Nature's weirdest events in numbersBy Ella DaviesReporter, BBC Nature
Can science explain mass bird deaths and other mysteries?
Related Stories
The mystery of massbird deaths
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Nature: Behind the ScenesFind out how the BBC Natural History Unit produceswildlife series such as Frozen Planet, Planet Earth andDeadly 60, by the people behind the scenes makingthem.
David Attenborough's best videoclips from the polar regions.
Attenborough's frozenplanet
The biggest, deadliest andweirdest creatures ever to walk theEarth.
Deadly dinosaurs
A blue tit's singing in our tree, right
now. It must be the mild winter.Jen Davis on Facebook
were fee ling uneasy after mother nature sent them some
see mingly apocalyptic signs.
The town of Beebe in the US state of Arkansas is home to an estimated
1.5 million redwing blackbirds year-round, a species known for flocking
in great numbers.
On New Year's Eve 2011, thousands of the birds fell from the sky in a
single night.
The proceeding days saw the town overrun with hazmat suited
environmental workers and journalists attempting to explain the
perplexing "aflockalypse".
After examining the birds' bodies, pathologists found the birds had died
from trauma injuries and suggested that they were disturbed from their
night roosts by a number of loud bangs, possibly fireworks.
Without good night-vision, the blackbirds simply collided with buildings
and fell to the ground dead.
Although such mysterious natural phenomena can often be explained by
science, they continue to intrigue us.
These are some of the numbers behind nature's weirdest events.
Tongue biter
Cymothoa exigua are one of the 386 species of
isopod or louse known to attach to the tonguesfish after entering through the gills.
Once in place, the parasites feed on the fish,
eating away their flesh and feeding on their
blood supply to become a replacement tongue.
Adult lice can reach up to 4cm (1.57in) in length
and are most commonly found off the coast of
A thousand birds fallout of sky
Locust plague attackscrops in NSW
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California.
The first "tongue biter" in the UK was found
inside a red snapper at a fishmonger's in
London in 2005.
Dr Tammy Horton from the National
Oceanography Centre, Southampton says
they receive roughly one report of the parasites
annually.
They pose no threat to humans but live
specimens can deliver a nasty nip with the
sharp claws they use to attach to the fish's
tongues.
Exploding toads
More than 1,000 dead toads were recorded in Altona, Hamburg, in just a
few days over the spring of 2005.
The toads' usual mating site was dubbed the "pond of death" as
researchers attempted to explain the strange scene.
Investigation of the dead amphibians revealed each had injuries on its
back and its liver had been removed.
Experts deduced that crows had been performing key-hole surgery to
remove the nutritious organ without ingesting the toads' toxic skin. The
clever corvids had attacked while the toads were preoccupied withmating.
As a natural defence, the toads swelled to 3.5 times their normal size but
without a liver to stop their lungs expanding they continued to swell until
they exploded.
The resulting explosions spread the animals' entrails up to a metre in
distance.
A tongue replaced by a parasite
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Seeing red
Tens of millions of ladybirds infested a small town in the US state of
Colorado, turning trees blood red, in 2009.
It was a bumper year for the insects' food source, aphids, due to a
particularly wet spring, with three times the average rainfall in the north
of Jefferson county.
The insects swarmed trees to find mates but quickly dispersed once their
goal had been achieved.
Freeze frame
In 2011, scientists satellite-tracking musk oxen in Alaska, US were
distressed to find their55 subjects frozen solid.
The animals are Arctic specialists with two
layers of fur and can weigh overhalf a tonne.
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Residents were seeing red over an infestation of ladybirds.
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But these adaptations were useless when a
storm at sea created a tidal surge that cracked
the surface of the frozen bay they were
crossing, plunging the oxen into the water.
With air temperatures at -30C the surface of the
water rapidly refroze, trapping the animals in an
icy grave.
Biblical proportions
Last yearbillions of locusts plagued an area of Australia larger than
500,000 sq km (190,000 square miles), twice the size of Britain.
According to the Australian Plague Locust Commission, individual
swarms reached 300sq km in size, with an average of10 locusts per
square metre .
The voracious insects devoured crops From Longreach in Queensland in
the north-east to Melbourne and Adelaide in the south in the largestplague in 30 years.
Experts cited flooding earlier in the year as the trigger for the population
explosion, because locust eggs need warm moist conditions to fully
develop.
Once hatched, it took 6-8 weeks for the locusts
to develop from eggs through nymphs to full-
fledged adults.
The adult locusts lived for up to 10 months,
terrorising Australian farmers and costing them
an estimated A$2bn (US$2.07bn; 1.33bn) as
the insects ate their way through pasture and
cereal crops.
Tragedy at sea
The bodies of8,000 sea birds washed up along
Only the musk oxen's horns and hides were visible
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300 miles of coastline in the north-western US
in 2009.
Rescuers feared an oil spill but the birds were
actually scuppered by a naturally occurring
foam.
A similar incident in California in 2007 where
600 birds were washed ashore was linked to a
"red tide" of algae out at sea.
The algae produced a foam that was not toxic
but nevertheless proved deadly for the birds by
sticking to their feathers, ruining waterproofing and causing hypothermia
as the cold seawater made contact with their skin.
Thanks to the previous investigation, many of the birds in 2009 were
rescued, cleaned and returned to the sea.
The common link between harmless ladybirds, boundless locusts and
defenceless birds is the natural human curiosity that spurred scientists
into investigating mother nature's mysteries.
Whatever the future throws at us, our fascination with past weird
phenomena could be the key to explaining the inexplicable.
Chris Packham presents Nature's Weirdest Events on Tuesday 3
January, 20:00 GMT on BBC Two.
Conditions were perfect for a locust populationexplosion
More on This Story
Related Stories
The mystery of mass bird deaths07 JANUARY 2011, US & CANADA
A thousand birds fall out of sky03 JANUARY 2011, US & CANADA
Locust plague attacks crops in NSW29 SEPTEMBER 2010, ASIA-PACIFIC
Ladybird invasion in Colorado12 JULY 2009, AMERICAS
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