#saigas

[antiqueanimals]

All About Animals, 1979.

[wild-special-interests]

S N O O T

[rjzimmerman]

A Wet and Warm Spring, Then 200,000 Dead Saigas

Scientists identified bacteria that caused a mass die-off of the endangered antelopes in Kazakhstan in 2015. But the mechanism that made the bacteria so deadly is not understood.

A field of dead saigas in Kazakhstan in May 2015. The die-off of the endangered antelopes was found to be caused by bacteria that somehow became harmful after particularly warm and wet weather. Credit: Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity, Kazakhstan, Biosafety Institute, Gvardeskiy RK, Royal Veterinary College, London, UK

Excerpt:

Among saiga antelopes, the month of May ought to be about new life. But in 2015, it was just the opposite for the Betpak-Dala saiga population in central Kazakhstan.

In only three weeks, about 220,000 of the critically endangered antelopes, most of them newborns and mothers that had gathered to calve, dropped dead across an area the size of Britain.

In a study published today in Science Advances, researchers presented a preliminary account of the cause of the mysterious die-off: Bacteria called Pasteurella multocida, which seem normally to exist harmlessly in saigas’ tonsils, somehow invaded their guts, poisoning their blood and breaking down their organs, leading to death within a few hours.

The mechanism that allowed the bacteria to become so harmful is still unclear, but the scientists believe it had something to do with a peculiarly wet and warm period before the outbreak.

“One possible explanation might be that climate change is driving these events,” said Richard Kock, a professor at the Royal Veterinary College in London and an author of the paper. There have been a series of such die-offs in recent years, he noted, but the team found no evidence for these events before the 1980s.

[syntax-forest]

Ini Steppe with Saigas from the April 2016 issue of Ranger Rick

[teenageloveenemy-blog]

Saiga Antelopes Are Struck Again by a Plague in Central Asia By @ERICA GOODE Author #Science #Endangered and Extinct Species, Saigas #BREAKING #TRENDING #UK #USA #news An ancient species that once roamed grasslands with woolly mammoths is dying in great numbers in Mongolia, with harmful factors piling up. from NYT The New York Times

[zsl-edge-of-existence]

Perhaps because the saiga gathers into such large groups to migrate and give birth, they are extremely vulnerable to disease.   Between 1980 and 2014 there have been multiple mass die-offs of saiga herds due to disease, showing a contrast to their high reproductive rate.  In the summer of 2015, another mass die-off occurred, this one taking the lives of over 120,000 saiga, or nearly half the world population.  The cause of this devastating occurrence has still not been determined

[zsl-edge-of-existence]

The saiga was described by the historian Strabo as a common animal of Scythia in the last century BC.  He called the saiga the “Kolos”, and described it as "between the deer and ram in size".  He also believed, incorrectly, that the saiga drank through its nose.

[zsl-edge-of-existence]

There are two subspecies of saiga; the Russian saiga (above), living primarily in Kazakhstan, is larger and has longer horns than the Mongolian saiga (below).  The Mongolian saiga is also distinct in that it does not migrate, and it is also far rarer; there are perhaps only 1500 Mongolian saiga left in the world, compared to 30 000 Russian.