January 11, 2007: Ewes die of asphyxiation, fright
 

http://cellar.org/2006/deadewes.jpg

An unhappy animal shot today. 24 horas en fotos at 20minutos.es has this dreadful one, translated by Bablefish:

Too bad that didn't happen near a country road in Tennessee.

The vultures scared them to death, and then didn't eat them?

They aren't smelly and rotten enough yet.

i don't believe it. sheepshit, i say.

how does an animal asphyxiate under an open sky? much less a hundred or so. you might as well say that they were smote by an angry god.

An angry god whose smiting arm was sheathed in tens of vultures! And you, a poet no less!

People get crushed to death in a crowd. Sheep are (arguably) stupider than people. :right:

They climbed up on top of each other, possibly several layers deep. The ones at the bottom couldn't breathe because of the weight of the others on top crushing down on them.

96 people died the same way at the Hillsborough football disaster in 1989 at Sheffield, England.

Maybe they had their fill...I see some bloody torn flesh on some of them.

I find it odd that they died in a nice, flat, layer...

I'd say either trampled, and the live animals moved away for the photo...or a low lying gas crept into the solid walled pen and asphyxiated them. I just can't get my mind around trampled. I'd expect them to be 'piled' more and not in a single layer.
hh

yeah, but a relatively small segment of the huge mass of people was crushed by the press. they didnt ALL die. somethings up here. who farted might be onto it. maybe the vultures could smell the gas, and knew they'd be dead soon, and that's why they arrived in the first place?

Looking at the "ring around the corral" (bad pun) I note the grime, which leads me to wondering if they all made it a habit to congregate and poop in the area. Thermal inversion, methane, and that's HH's creeping gas theory. And methane displacing O2 is asphyxiation if I'm not mistaken.

Plus the mighty arm of the lord smiting with the power of tens of vultures.

However you slice it, ewe wouldn't want to be there.

maybe they got a particulary gassey batch of sheepchow [up]tm[/up] and the resultant flatulence was their undoing?

how the fuck do you make that little TM ?!

bwuahahaha who farted?

™??

Methane is lighter than air, so would not work for what you propose.

paridera
1- adj. [Female] fertilizes of any species:
paridera cow.
2- f. Site in which it stops the cattle, specially the wool one.
3- Action and time to give birth the cattle.

Loarre is a villa of the province of Huesca, municipality pertaining to the region Hole of Huesca. It is located to the foot of the mountain range of his own name to 27 km to NOT of Huesca in the A-1206 highway between Bolea and Ayerbe

:confused:

They needn't all have suffocated. It says they died of asphyxiation and fright. It's possible the ones in back couldn't breath while the others died from fright. Perhaps their little hearts burst from pumping too fast.

Sheep ARE very stupid, however having raised lambs for 4-H and being around large groups of sheep pressing together...they cannot press together (while standing with all 4 feet on the ground) enough to prevent them from being able to breathe. Their wool is a very good buffer between each other, allowing air space and room to expand their lungs.
And while I concur about sheep stupidity...I cannot see that many dying of fright from some large birds. These animals are harried by humans, dogs and various other predators...I've never heard of them dropping dead from fright. Turkeys, on the other hand...

I wonder if someone forgot to WATER these animals and has concocted a story to save their ass.

Also, the ring around the wall is from the lanolin sheep produce getting rubbed on the surface and dust sticking. Check out doorways in barns and such where the animals' bodies rub as they go past...it is always dirty from the oils of their coat and dust.

I proposed a thermal inversion which I believe would prevent the methane from rising. But then I also believe a lot of other things too, so take it for what it's worth.

In the open, yes. But what about a large flock up against an immovable object? A very large flock to kill 300 ewes. :confused:

The posted picture does not show 300 ewes, and I've seen sheep ranching, shearing, and butchering operations with wooden pens holding hundreds to thousands of sheep crowing each other so tightly the dogs had to walk on the backs of the sheep to get across the pen to do their work of cutting animals out for sorting.

I cannot dispute that the animals are dead, they certainly are, but it seems improbable to me that they died in the manner they are claimed to have...trampoling seems most likely...but again, I find it odd that they are in a single layer and not piled or overlapping.

My reasoning behind thinking sheep could not squeeze other sheep up against an immoveable wall is because of their short legs and lack of leverage and weight. Animals are going to stand. Some will lean, but most will keep their legs under them. It is instinctive. If you are off balance, you could fall and die. Period. All animals want to stand upright to survive. They do not want to be down, and especially upside-down is anathema to them.
I would expect that sheep at the outer edge of a herd WILL press away from whatever is stimulating them. The other sheep (away from the stimulation) are not going to react very much at all. As soon as they are out of sight of the stimulation (stupid sheep) out-of-sight-out-of-mind, they will just stand. Their wool will create the buffer needed to breathe. The few leaning sheep are not enough weight to crush other sheep up against a wall.

These ewes appear to have died where they stood. Asphyxiation from air displacement seems likely, as stated...but I feel poisoning from contaminated feed could also be a likely culprit and could cause them to die en mass in a single layer.
I'd like to know what a necropsy had to say about cause of death...

I agree the story and picture don't jib...not 300....not piled. Another tragic victim of Babelfish? ;)

The problem was one of them tried to light a fart and we got the "Moderator Island effect."

yeah, that. how?

Um, maybe the ones that didn't die were let out before the picture was taken - just a thought.

It looks grim, especially given our ban on embedded html. I reckon the best you could do is to make the size = 1, perhaps enclosed in parentheses... Don't know how to superscript it here. Good luck.

(TM)

or

(TM)

™

ampersand,pound sign,1,5,3,semicolon.

huh ™

You can't use like that, footfootfoot, without GWB's permission. fyi.

Certainly, if there were survivors...
I don't know how this correlates to the discussion. 300 dead? Not (300) in that picture, and if they were dead, they wouldn't be alive to be let out. Do you mean if they were trampled? The live animals that walked all over the dead ones just walked away while their departed brethren were left behind for the photo op.
I'm not sure what you meant.
hh

If they were crowding against one wall (away from the vultures), presumably (and ironically) the ones closest to the vultures would have been likely to survive.

They were probably trampled and after the "care givers" moved the live animals they spread out the dead so they could count them or something.

...that nicely explains the single layer...

they cook more evenly that way, too

noshit!™

'owdyou learn that, eh?

HA!™

Youse all gonna die of asphyxiation, right?
 

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I've never heard of vultures attacking a person but the two I saw feasting on a possum didn't look like something I wanted to mess with. A whole flock of them could be intimidating.

And if you don't like remembering the &#___; sequence, you can always just hold down ALT+0153 and it'll do the same thing.

for some reason that takes me to the homepage

™

Well by golly I never heard of that before!

Can't get the alt one to work, though.

I'll just bookmark this page and copy(Ctr+C) and then paste (Ctr+V)it wherever I need :)


™

ALT+0153. For this to work™ use the number pad, with number lock off. ™

›š˜œ§¨™žŸ— §¨Ç£
all kinds of wierd shit in those keys!

alt+

0181 µ
0182 ¶
0183 ·
0185 ¹
0186 º
0187 »
0188 ¼
0189 ½
0190 ¾
0191 ¿
0197 Å
0198 Æ
0199 Ç
8881 ▒
8882 ▓
8884 ┤

who's got the map of this shit. i could make cool text art.

It's Unicode. A semi-subset is the ASCII character set, which you can use by only using three digits with ALT.

☺☻♥♦♣♠•◘○

hmmm.....


Ö ™½êçoÞ


oooh I like that one :Þ

That's what the Character Map under Windoze/Accessories/System is for.

Just askin - How does a thread thats about dead sheep end up at "Windoze/Accessories/System." ?

All good things come to those that wait. ;)

lol thanks Bruce - I knew I could count on you!

First it's ewes, now it's chickens.

Evil vulture child