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Hundreds of birds suddenly drop from the sky [video]
- rcarmo 5y agoGeofenced, can't watch it from Europe.
- supovic1 5y agoThe same problem here. Turn on VPN, works fine, i.e. from Japan.
- ww520 5y agoFor a moment, I thought the birds are geofenced at height and thus fell down, like Icarus flying too close to the sun.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- _ph_ 5y agoHere is a youtube link which works from Europe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D2lrFemFig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D2lrFemFig
- h2odragon 5y agoThe middle of the flock is a bad place to be, when the flock slams into the ground at full speed. "dammit, Bob, you had the map!"
- fourseventy 5y agoAnyone see the show 'Dark'? Birds drop from the sky every time someone travels back in time... could be that.
- ssully 5y agoI think there are a few other theories we should investigate first, but I'll add time travel to the list.
- terran57 5y agoI could see the predator chasing them to the ground theory being the truth here.
- Slow_Hand 5y agoThat'd be a hell of a hunting technique if the predators keyed into it: Driving the entire flock to crash into an object, allowing them to prey on the dead and injured.
- spenczar5 5y agoSee also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_jump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_jump
- johnnythunder 5y agoThis exact same thing happened in my front yard, except it was on a much smaller scale. The cause - falcon chasing the flock of birds into the house. It actually chased them several times until it finally forced several to hit the side. The falcon then proceeded to fly away with the dead and injured one at a time.
- scifi 5y agoIt does not appear to me that the birds dropped from the sky. It seems like, for whatever reason, they flew under their own power directly into the ground and surrounding scenery.
- gowld 5y agoYeah, it's just a flock of birds flying down.
- berkut 5y agoA reddit comment I saw last week mentioned it could be just the flock/murmuration were trying to get away from a predator and flew lower, and the ones at the bottom didn't have much luck and hit the ground. Would at least make sense...
- w-ll 5y agoI read that they went between some powerlines and the flock of them caused a short between the lines that spread and arc'd through them.
- ortusdux 5y agoFrom the link: Ornithologist and biology professor at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, Ronald L. Mumme told Newsweek he thought a large bird was behind it. "Based on the birds' behavior, my suspicion is that a falcon or other bird-eating raptor attacked the flock in flight, and during evasive maneuvers the flock members dove, became disoriented, and many crashed to the ground and injured themselves," he said. "I don't think any birds were having problems until they collided with the ground or buildings. It looks like most of the birds were able to fly away, but a significant number could not." Two more experts told The Guardian they agreed with Mumme, blaming the event on "flock murmurating to avoid a predator raptor."
- CyanBird 5y agoIt was an electric shortcut The birds where standing on an electric cable, you can see the posts in the video, the flock because it was tightly packaged while standing on the cables it made them touch and that electrocuted a lot of birds it seems
- ghostly_s 5y agoI don't think so. The bulk of them flew right away afterwards.
- stronglikedan 5y agoThat's the explanation I read when this was released the other day. The birds closer to the wire bore the brunt of the shock as it arc'd out to birds not even touching the wire. You can see where the bulk of the dead birds fall in line with the wire, and get more sparse as they're distributed outward. Then, a few of them are merely stunned, and get up to fly away.
- arcastroe 5y agoHere's a video of what this looks like. I initially suspected the same thing. https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdB4GvSk/ https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdB4GvSk/ (Skip to the end of the video for the wire collapsing under the birds' weight)
- Synaesthesia 5y agoCinema4D?
- paulgb 5y agoThis looks like a Boids implementation that gets the flocking behavior right but has a bug in ground collision avoidance.
- salynchnew 5y agoAssume this is evasive behavior due to a predator or predator-analogue (i.e., a drone might also be mistaken for a predator and cause this behavior).
- sandgiant 5y agoVideo available for Europeans here: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/14/why-did-birds-fall-from-sky-in-mexico-probably-a-predator-experts-say-aoe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/14/why-did-...
- rambojazz 5y agoWOW I never thought content like this would be tagged "graphic"
- drzoltar 5y agoMaybe a microburst [0] of air from a developing thunderstorm? Basically, an extremely powerful downward burst of cold air. Seems to have killed birds in the past [1]. This is absolutely terrifying during takeoff/landing inside an airplane [2]. [0]: https://www.weather.gov/ama/microbursts https://www.weather.gov/ama/microbursts [1]: https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/mystery-solved-unusual-microbursts-of-downward-air-killed-hundreds-of-birds-in-lancaster-county/article_2dc3c294-2f8e-11e4-a96b-0017a43b2370.html https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/mystery-solved-unusua... [2]: https://youtu.be/Q3Sr2F_xxLo https://youtu.be/Q3Sr2F_xxLo
- rambojazz 5y agoThe article from The Guardian quotes as the most likely cause: "Dr Richard Broughton, an ecologist [..] said a predator could have made the birds swirl tightly and driven them towards the ground, with higher birds forcing lower ones to crash into the buildings or the ground."
- mrtksn 5y agofor those having issues with geofencing on the current event, here is the video on YouTube(the high quality version): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJqdmkjSD2A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJqdmkjSD2A There was also an instance of birds crashing into a skyscraper in Texas: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4478166/Flock-nearly-400-birds-crash-skyscraper-die.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4478166/Flock-nearl... ~400 dead. ps: Obviously, it contains footage that can be disturbing to some.
- tcfhgj 5y ago"Sorry, this content is not available in your region." Germany btw
- peanut_worm 5y agoI am not sure if those are starlings, but starlings form giant flocks called murmurations. The flocks don’t have a leader and every bird just follows the birds around it, and as a result sometimes they crash into things. I wonder if that is happening here.
- SN76477 5y agoiirc birds are really sensitive to some types of gases. Is it possible that a flock of birds flew into a pocket of such gas? Maybe methane escaping the earth?
- Shadonototra 5y agoclickbait title
- sleepingadmin 5y agoThought they died, nope just stupid birds. Sorry for being redundant, I could just say bird.