Animal, Bird and Crab Mass Deaths Spark Apocalypse Theories Online

(news.com.au) - A recent spate of mass animal deaths around the world has sparked a rash of conspiracy theories and doomsday predictions with many people taking to the internet to have their say, news.com.au reported Thursday.

From the U.S. to New Zealand, from Britain to Brazil, bizarre cases of birds, fish and crabs turning up dead en masse have been reported in the past two weeks and no one seems to know why.

Not that it’s stopping residents of the internet from putting forward their own explanations.

One example is from conspiracy theorists Joseph Watson and Alex Jones of prisonplanet.com who blame it on "the government." According to the site, authorities have “routinely engaged in secret testing of biological and electromagnetic weapons that have detrimentally impacted both humans and animals many times in the past.”

Others are blaming it on the New Madrid fault line in the southern US, although how this affects birds flying in the sky is unclear, while others have talked up the 2012 Mayan end of the world predictions highlighted in the 2009 disaster film called "2012."

In particular, news.com.au reported, the speculation was started by the deaths of 100,000 drum fish washed up along a 19 miles (30km) stretch of the Arkansas River -- which authorities have blamed on a disease, and the death of thousands of red-winged blackbirds about 125 miles (201km) from the drum fish -- blamed on a bout of bad weather or fireworks.

More recently 40,000 dead devil crabs in England, tons (tonnes) of dead fish in New Zealand and Brazil, plus more dead birds in the U.S. and Sweden have kept the internet abuzz.

Source: news.com.au