In central Norway, more than 300 reindeer were killed during a lightning storm Friday. According to the Norwegian Environment Agency, 323 reindeer were killed, 70 of them calves.
The agency released eerie images showing a jumble of reindeer carcasses scattered across a small area on the Hardangervidda mountain plateau.
Agency spokesman Kjartan Knutsen told The Associated Press it's not uncommon for reindeer or other wildlife to be killed by lightning strikes but this was an unusually deadly event.
"We have not heard about such numbers before," he said Monday.
He said reindeer tend to stay very close to each other in bad weather, which could explain how so many were killed at once.
"I don't know if there were several lightning strikes," he said. "But it happened in one moment."
Knutsen said the agency is now discussing what to do with the dead animals. Normally, they are just left where they fall to let nature take its course, he said.
As the seasons change, thousands of reindeer migrate across the barren Hardangervidda plateau as the seasons change.
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