To me this would be logical. The herd likely was on a rise closest to the sky in that area, and an electrical imbalance occurred between the earth and sky and that would be all it would take to kill a herd with one or more large strikes. When they are feeding on the grass the lightning would ground through their tongues, mouths and hooves and the bolt through their tongues would give them a stroke through their brains and that would be it.
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How exactly did lightning kill 323 reindeer in Norway?
| The Verge | - |
Lightning
during a recent thunderstorm in Norway killed a herd of 323 reindeer -
70 of them calves - making it one of the deadliest strikes ever.
How exactly did lightning kill 323 reindeer in Norway?
Herds are more vulnerable to lightning strikes
(Norwegian Environment Agency)
Lightning during a recent thunderstorm in Norway killed a herd of 323 reindeer — 70 of them calves
— making it one of the deadliest strikes ever. Hunters in a remote area
discovered the bodies last Friday, according to the Norwegian News
Agency.
We usually hear about lightning striking people, but it does kill animals, too.
Two scientists at an Australian research institute have found that
everything from seal pups to wild turkeys to elephants and giraffes can
be killed by lightning.
Was this a freak accident, or is it common? And how does
this happen? I spoke to John Jensenius, a lightning safety expert from
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to learn about the
science behind these deadly herd strikes. (This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)
Angela Chen: First, how likely is it that it
really was lightning that killed those reindeer? Is there a way to know
without having seen the strike directly?
John Jensenius: It isn’t that unusual to see farm
animals, or wild animals such as reindeer, being killed by lightning. Of
course, 323 is a rather large number, though we’ve seen reports of 654 sheep being killed in one spot.
Animals do tend to group together in storms and huddle
under trees. If lightning strikes the tree or somewhere nearby, the
entire group can be killed. We don’t know how common this is because
it’s hard to track, though usually it’s herds of 10 or 20 animals that
get killed.
In the case where the animals are huddling under a tree,
oftentimes you’ll see some visible signs on the tree, though you may not
see any visible signs on the animals themselves. In this case, it’s
hard to know where lightning struck based on the pictures, but there may
be an animal among the dead animals that has visible signs, like a bit
of charring on the skin.
How did lightning kill all of those reindeer at once? Did they need to be touching for this to happen?
When animals or people are in groups, most are being
killed by the ground current. First, there’s a direct strike — this is
what most people think of when they think of lightning — that hits the
tree or maybe the ground nearby. The energy then spreads along the
ground surface, and if you’re anywhere near that lightning strike, you
absorb it and get shocked.
Lightning goes up one leg and down another. Animals are
more vulnerable because their legs are spread out more, so the ground
currents travel more easily in their bodies. It doesn’t matter if
they’re touching, or exactly how close they are, it matters that they
were all in the area hit by lightning. Ground currents are the thing
that’s responsible for the most lightning deaths and injuries in both
people and animals.
How far can the ground current travel? When are you safe?
That’s one question we’re often asked, and it’s a
difficult question because it depends on a lot of factors, including the
strength of the actual lightning strike.
In this case, the animals seem to be in an area that was
50 to 80 feet in diameter and on a hillside, which gives you some idea
that lightning can travel a good distance and still be deadly. Lightning
doesn’t always travel deep into the ground.
What exactly is it about lightning that kills these animals?
It’s the electricity going into your body. It passes
through the nervous system and your nerves, and the deadly part is that
it stops the heart. In the case of people, many can be revived with CPR
if tended to immediately but with reindeer, it just would have stopped
their hearts.
What are some other types of lightning besides the ground current and the direct strike?
There’s the side flash. That’s when an animal or person
is standing close to the tree, the tree is hit by lightning, and then
the lightning jumps from tree to person or animal. The side flash
usually kills one or a small number of animals, not large ones like with
ground currents.
There’s also something called a "wall conduction," which
is when something plugged into the wall is a direct connection to a wire
outside. So if the wire outside is struck, the lightning will follow
the wire and you can be shocked.
Are lightning fatalities, in people at least, going down?
Yes, they’ve been dropping over recent years. If you go
back over the 1930s and 1940s, we had about 300 to 400 people killed
every year in the United States. Nowadays, our 10-year average is about
31 people per year. This year so far we’ve had 32.
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