All tag results for 'sweden'

What's happening?

Something is happening!

But this time…M. Night Shyamalan isn't behind it.

More birds have fallen on our northern neighbors land!

A farmer in Quebec has found 80 dead birds on his land and apparently more are falling.

Sylvain Turmel first noticed the dead birds in his field on Dec. 18 and said:

"I found two dead birds in the morning, which is normal, birds sometimes die, but when I came back one hour later, another 25 had fallen. In the time it took me to pick them up, five more fell to the ground!"

Dead birds littered this holiday season in Arkansas, Louisiana and Sweden, but officials have yet to give a solid explanation as to WHY they died leaving everyone on edge.

Canada isn't any closer to solving the mystery either as wildlife officials with Quebec's Ministry of Natural Resources collected the birds for analysis, but are also stumped.

Turmel hasn't gotten very many details as he says:

"All they can tell me is that it's not avian influenza, it's not the West Nile virus, and it's not poison," which is what officials suspected at first. It won't stop. I'm finding more [dead] birds every day."

David Bird, a wildlife biologist at McGill University in Montreal, said he's been receiving plenty of phone calls about the birds, but is not alarmed.

According to the expert, this type of phenomenon is more common than people realize. He says:

"First of all, it's not a biblical curse. It's not a death ray from an alien space ship. There are many cases where birds get hit by hailstorms or get lost in the fog and they die of starvation and they just fall dead out of the sky."

Bird thinks each incident has its own unique cause and there is no need for people to panic, as he continues:

"I think this is a case where it's just coincidental … and people are trying to link them together."

Maybe this does happen all the time, but how come it has never been covered so much by the media or received this much attention?

What do U think?

[Image via AP Images.]

Tags: arkansas, bird flu, canada, death, end of the world, farm, louisiana, sweden, virus

Remember how we said it wasn't a biblical plague after all? We might be eating our words soon.

Millions of dead fish surfaced in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay on Tuesday, while similar unexplained mass fish deaths occurred across the world in Brazil and New Zealand.

We don't want to cause mass hysteria, but this is some scary stuff.

100 tons of sardines, croaker and catfish have washed up in Brazilian fishing towns since last Thursday and hundreds of dead snapper fish washed up on beaches in New Zealand with their eyes missing.

The cause of these deaths is unknown for now and believed to be unrelated, but officials in each country have their suspicions set on chemical pollution, an imbalance in the environment, or starvation due to weather conditions.

A spokesperson for the Maryland Department of the Environment says "cold-water stress" is believed to be the culprit for those fish in the Chesapeake Bay and said similar large winter fish deaths were documented in 1976 and 1980.

The world didn't end then, so we might be okay, but birds are still dropping too!

On Wednesday, 50 birds were found dead on a street in Sweden!

Officials are saying fireworks likely caused the Arkansas and Sweden bird deaths, while power lines may be to blame for the death of the birds in Louisiana.

Let's HOPE that fireworks were the cause and cross our fingers that we don't hear any more news about mass animal deaths for the rest of 2011!

[Image via AP Images.]

Tags: biblical plague, brazil, dead, deaths, environment, new zealand, pollution, sweden

As the holidays are approaching, there have been images of happy reindeer pulling sleighs, however that is not quite realistic.

According to the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) reindeer are being rounded up in large numbers, transported and slaughtered in Sweden and Finland.

Click Here to see some footage from this horrible investigation, but be careful, it is quite graphic.

Traditionally reindeer farming had ben done on a much smaller scale. However it has become so much more commercial in these countries and the amount of reindeer meat being sold on the market has increased significantly.

How do U feel about the slaughter of reindeer?

[Image via WENN.]

Tags: animals, footage, holiday, meat, protect, reindeer, sweden

How cute are these little guys?!?!?

A litter of "Sand Cat kittens" have just arrived at the Parken Zoo in Sweden. CUTEST. ARRIVAL. EVER.

For those of you who have never heard of the "Sand Cat kitten" before, here are a couple of facts about them:

-They range from 15 to 22 inches in length

-Their tails are a foot long!

-Adults weigh between 3 and 7-1/2 lbs

-In the wild, they live in dry, sandy desert areas

-They can survive for months on the water in their food

And the most important fact:

-They're incredibly adorable!

We are SO ready to brave the desert to find one of these…or maybe a trip to Sweden is in order!

[Images via Mats Elting/Flickr.]

Tags: adorable, cute, desert, dry, sand cat kittens, sweden