Whether it's red tilapia dying en masse in Thailand or thousands of blackbirds dropping out of the sky over Arkansas it might seem like the entire natural world has given up the ghost.
Now this startling new map shows every instance of falling birds and dying fish across the globe over the past few weeks.
Created by an anonymous user and posted on the aggregator website Digg, each pin represents a mention in the media of an instance of a large number of animals dying suddenly.
The map shows that most deaths have taken place in a cluster across the US east coast and a smattering around the UK.
Conspiracy theorists among the thousands who have already logged on to view the map say that the data should be superimposed over another map showing where oil exploration is currently under way, suggesting a sinister link between the two.
But, as New Scientist suggested on Tuesday, just because many animals appear to be dying at the same time doesn't mean the beginning of the end of the world as we know it.
Nor does it mean that the events are necessarily linked. It may just be that the high-profile events in Arkansas have sparked a flurry of reports appearing in the media rather than an actual increase in occurrences.
Many similar "rains" of animals are caused by tornadoes that move over water, sucking up animals and spitting them out elsewhere.
Author: Niall Firth | Source: New Scientist [January 06, 2011]