Lightning strike kills more than 300 reindeer in Norway

In a weird incident, more than 320 wild reindeer were killed by a lightning strike in Norway last week, leaving wildlife officials shocked.

The animals were situated on the central mountain plateau of Hardangervidda when the lightning struck, leaving the bodies of 323 deer, including 70 calves, scattered along the region.

While the large number of dead animals in Hardangervidda has surprised experts, it’s not that uncommon for lightning to kill entire herds, notes John Jensenius, a lightning safety expert from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in an interview with The Verge.

Wild animals are occasionally struck by lightning, but the agency has never seen so many killed at once, spokesperson Kjartan Knutsen told CNN. “But it happened in one moment”.

One of the agency’s inspectors discovered the dead animals over the weekend after a storm passed through.

Normally, they are just left where they are to let nature take its course, he said. The energy then spreads along the ground surface, and if you’re anywhere near that lightning strike, you absorb it and get shocked. As the seasons change, thousands of reindeer migrate across the plateau, moving between drier lands in the east, where they graze on lichens, and wetter lands in the west, where they breed.

It’s not the first time a large herd of animals have been killed by lightning.

In May of this year, lightning killed 21 cattle in South Dakota that were feeding around a metal feeding trough during a thunderstorm. In 2005, 68 cows were killed in Australia by a single bolt.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.