
Hundreds of Botswana elephants dead in mysterious mass die-off - YeGoblynQueenne
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/01/more-than-350-elephants-dead-in-mysterious-mass-die-off-botswana-aoe
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chrisco255
Disease seems like most likely culprit to me. Even if it's not Covid. Could be
another virus.

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war1025
That was my first thought. "Great, the Coronavirus is coming for the elephants
now"

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pvaldes
Around water points. Farmers poisoning would be my first candidate

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Valgrim
Other animals and scavengers appear unaffected.

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pvaldes
Researchers might want to look for calcium oxalate crystals in the urinary
bladder.

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qqn
The first thing I think of is that case of acacias killing antelope:
[https://jstor.org/stable/24997007](https://jstor.org/stable/24997007)

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brailsafe
Unrelated to the topic, but damn does The Gaurdian have a long list of vendors
they transmit data to or otherwise use for advertising/tracking. On the large
blue rectangle, click through to "options", turn everything off, and click the
dropdown that is labeled "vendors".

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oliwarner
Not defending them but our local newspaper has double that list. Rando US news
sites have five times that.

Most news sites have inordinate numbers of advertising vectors and tracking
elements. One assumes it's because it literally pays the bills. Let an
external and manager deal with it because it gets "inventory" filled fast.

But yes, you'd expect The Guardian to be a little more privacy focussed.

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brailsafe
I agree, most news sites are awful about it. I don't hold The Guardian to a
higher standard, because their reporting is often — but perhaps less so than
most — just as questionable.

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hanoz
_> "some of them have fallen straight on their face, indicating they died very
quickly. Others are obviously dying more slowly, like the ones that are
wandering around"_

This seems a bit of a strange analysis. Could they not have all died, to
borrow a phrase, gradually then suddenly?

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pengaru
Well that's a bummer.

On a lighter elephants note, they're incredibly capable at painting:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLxO7MPUKH8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLxO7MPUKH8)

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abraae
Good on you perhaps for injecting a lighter note, but I'd personally rather
that these very upsetting events retain their gravity and perhaps shock us
into action.

Case in point the Australian bush fires earlier this year.

Half a billion or so dead animals and millions of hectares of habitat burned
to a crisp.

But cue happy news stories about someone rescuing a koala and feeding it milk
from a baby bottle - something that makes absolutely not one jot of difference
to the massive death and devastation contributed to by our (humans) shitty
environmental stewarding.

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pengaru
Did we read the same article? The cause isn't known yet.

I'm not in favor of "shocking us into action" when we're not even informed of
what it is we're acting on.

Quick, act! Sign this petition banning dihydrogen monoxide!

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throwaway384629
Any action is better than diluting the discussion with irrelevant information

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pengaru
> Any action is better than diluting the discussion with irrelevant
> information

At least you're aware enough of how embarrassingly dumb your comments are to
use a throwaway account.

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throwaway384629
Its even more dumb of you to think that i created a throwaway account just to
reply to you!

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JoshTko
I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually Covid. We know it can jump multiple
species and that people have been known to collapse all of a sudden.

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mns
They are not quite susceptible to this
[https://twitter.com/ballouxfrancois/status/12783989319495352...](https://twitter.com/ballouxfrancois/status/1278398931949535233)

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harry8
Off topic but relevant:

There are times reading the news can be one hit after another to your mental
health. Do please be sensible about reading all this stuff. Read when feeling
mentally robust, possibly in the morning. Don't be afraid to just take a break
from news for a period of days or longer.

There's a lot happening, ensure looking after yourself is one of those things.

edit: I found those pictures of all those dead elephants unexpectedly
upsetting. Unlike all the upsetting news that one is expecting to be so and is
around now.

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codezero
I didn't expect this kind of comment here, but I really appreciate that you
left it.

I also was hit pretty hard by reading this article. There are a lot of very
detailed pictures, and a lot of dead elephants, it's really tragic.

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YeGoblynQueenne
I posted the article. I'm sorry it caused you distress. The dead elephants are
really not a pretty sight, I guess it's fair they should come with a big
warning.

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harry8
You should not be sorry. Thank you for posting it.

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YeGoblynQueenne
Thanks for writing the wraning comment.

