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You have to admit, the news is a little weird: 5,000 blackbirds falling dead from the sky in Arkansas; tens of thousands of dead fish in Chesapeake Bay; 50-100 dead birds found strewn in lawns in Sweden; 40,000 dead crabs washed up on England’s shores; 530 penguins, numerous other seabirds, five dolphins, and three giant sea turtles dead in Brazil; 200 American Coots dead on a Texas bridge; hundreds of snapper fish dead in New Zealand. And the list keeps growing.

Google is now mapping the incidents of mass animal deaths around the world. Google Maps' distinctive blue balloons indicate where the deaths took place. Click on a balloon, and Google will provide you with a link to a news report on the incident.

As of Friday afternoon, there were about 30 cases pinpointed on the search engine's mapping site, most of them in the U.S. and Europe.

Some might say it's getting spooky - and not just by conspiracy theorist standards - but experts tell CNN Radio that theories of UFOs and secret government weapons are, naturally, far-fetched.

Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, said his office has investigated 16 mass bird deaths in the past 20 years.

“This is a bit unusual but not unique,” he explained. “Most of the cases involved pesticides or poison ingested by the birds, but trauma has also been found to be the cause of mass bird deaths."

Good to know experts aren't buying that Armageddon is upon us. Offering even more comfort is the blog Universe Today, which suggests that the deaths aren't so much strange as they are "a symptom of the digital age where news travels faster than you can say, 'The End is Nigh.' "

It cites a Time magazine article that details several strange mass animal deaths and wonders "if the internet age allows us to connect the dots where there are none to be connected."

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I don't know how much of it is a current phenomenon vs. something that's happened all along and just hasn't caught our attention.

But I hope cockroaches catch on.

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thank you for sharing this, I have been watching these stories too. Sadly it seems the explanations for the mass animal deads points to some sort of intrusive by man on the animals environment. Whether it  be the poisons we dump into their eco- systems or our transportation, exploration and domination  the air, water and land.

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Aahh I just saw this on Fox News.  Lol!  Its weird for sure.  Someone on the news mentioned that scientists have said that magnetic north on our planet has shifted (a fairly common thing I guess), more toward Russia. It has caused some foul-ups at the Tampa (Fla) airport.  But they speculate that this may be why the birds and fish are dying.

Odd how most seem to be centered around the USA though eh?  

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Originally Posted by Dennis Young:
It has caused some foul-ups at the Tampa (Fla) airport.  But they speculate that this may be why the birds and fish are dying.

Last night, someone told me that the shift in polarity has something to do with moving The Dali to a new location.

http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/dpp/news/local/pinellas/dali%27s-art-transitions-to-new-home-01062010

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I saw on some Hulu Special that the Moon is gradually getting further and further from the Earth by about 4 inches per year. That has nothing to do with what's being discussed here, but I was just itching to say this anyways

What influenced my thinking of this though was the talk of polarity shifting. And it's thought that if and when the moon leaves earth's gravitational pull and starts orbiting another planet, then earth will tilt 90 degrees on it's axis throwing currently polarity that much off. But by that time, humans will have evolved into nanobots and we'll just migrate elsewhere in the universe.

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Even freakier than that ...

There's evidence showing that the polarity of the Earth's totally flip flopped several times during the ages.

And it makes me wonder, if it happened today, would birds fly north for the winter?

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Originally Posted by Scott Terry:
Even freakier than that ...

There's evidence showing that the polarity of the Earth's totally flip flopped several times during the ages.

And it makes me wonder, if it happened today, would birds fly north for the winter?

Doesn't a shift in polarity change the axis? Or is the axis specifically related to the direction the sun spins in? If it's related to the sun's evolution, then I don't think polarity shifting changes weather. now I'm confroozed (it's time for some redcat)

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Originally Posted by Shawn Ishness:

Doesn't a shift in polarity change the axis? Or is the axis specifically related to the direction the sun spins in? If it's related to the sun's evolution, then I don't think polarity shifting changes weather. now I'm confroozed (it's time for some redcat)

A shift in the Earth's axis of spin would definitely result in a shift in it's magnetic polarity but a shift in the polarity wouldn't cause a shift in the Earth's axis.

What I should've said was a pole reversal.  There have been times in the Earth's history where the north pole became the south pole and the south pole became the north pole (magnetic-wise).  And then they reversed back.

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Originally Posted by Scott Terry:

Originally Posted by Shawn Ishness:

Doesn't a shift in polarity change the axis? Or is the axis specifically related to the direction the sun spins in? If it's related to the sun's evolution, then I don't think polarity shifting changes weather. now I'm confroozed (it's time for some redcat)

A shift in the Earth's axis of spin would definitely result in a shift in it's magnetic polarity but a shift in the polarity wouldn't cause a shift in the Earth's axis.

What I should've said was a pole reversal.  There have been times in the Earth's history where the north pole became the south pole and the south pole became the north pole (magnetic-wise).  And then they reversed back.

Something just occurred to me, no, wait, it didn't (I think the Redcat is taking effect)

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Geomagnetic reversal is the proper term, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal