Mother nature likes her steaks well done.
Chickens, it turns out, are creatures of routine.
Hey. Fair’s fair.
The Deep-Sea Octopus make for very dedicated parents.
Mafia monkeys and their extortion racket.
How climate change gave us a variety of spotted skunks.
It’s a vampire bat! Well, an undead one. Sort of.
Watch a blue whale eat a bunch of krill, and learn about how they do it.
That whale reminds me of my urge when eating the GF’s garlic rosemary fries at her favorite pub.Report
32 dead cows is nothing. You can get *hundreds*.
Big 4 legged animals are *much* more vulnerable to electricity running along the ground than we are. Because their legs are further apart they’ll have larger electrical differences and the position of their organs means it goes through their heart.Report
Wasn’t there a story last year about a herd of reindeer somewhere that suffered the same fate?Report
Many children cried over this incident.Report
Probably didn’t help the cows were hanging out in a stand of trees.Report
Cow’s are also notorious scoffers of PSA’s.
We’ve never lost any animals to lightning (we think), but we did once lose an entire batch of chickens to wind (as far as we can tell).Report
The Deep Sea octopuses are dedicated to pre-natal care.
But then they leave a lot of orphans.Report
I wonder why the meat from the lightning struck cows is unfit for human consumption. The article doesn’t really say why.
Luckily, one of the scientists exploring the cave was wearing and crucifix and made a successful roll to turn undead vampire bats.Report
The electricity blows out blood vessels, sometimes the heart itself, and then the blood permeates the meat in a less than tasty way. Which also speeds up decomposition. (I imagine it would be like eating a badly bruised fruit.) That’s why people don’t eat animals killed by lightning.
“Unfit for human consumption” is a particular term in the food industry. When applied to meat, the animal must be able to walk on its own into the slaughterhouse in order to be considered “fit for human consumption”.Report
I’m by no means experienced in the matters, but it’s my understanding that need to gut an animal fairly quickly to prevent contamination of the meat. The article doesn’t say, but they cows could have been dead several hours before being discovered. Combine that with the impracticality of moving 32 whole cow carcasses. How would one even do that? Forklift?
It’s conceivable that there might be other regulations at play as well, such as actively slaughtering the animals instead of finding them dead and/or requiring it be done under proper conditions.Report
Because it’s been lying around in a non-temperature-controlled field for who knows how long.Report
Police in Chicago hail the shooting total of 49 people over the weekend as progress.Report
I don’t think skunks spray from the handstand position. They do it to make themselves look bigger. Other animals try to blend in and go unnoticed; not the skunk. His colors are a warning. When confronted, he says, “hey idiot, I’m a skunk”. He stands his ground, stomps his front paws, or stands up on his hind legs. Skunks get hit by cars a lot because they have lousy vision and don’t scare off easily. Forest creatures generally learn not to bother them.Report