‘Pigeon apocalypse’

The environmental prosecutor’s office in Moscow has begun an investigation into what is being termed by some as a “pigeon apocalypse.”

Many of the Russian capital’s pigeons have been dropping from the sky and behaving like “zombies” before dying, according to a recent story in the UK’s Guardian newspaper. Some of the pigeons have reportedly acted “as if drugged, stumbling and reacting slowly to humans, or else flying into the faces of passersby and falling to the ground.”

The suspected cause of the mass pigeon deaths is Newcastle disease, an avian disease that can be transmitted to humans.

“Before death, they start to resemble zombies: They lose their orientation and fly without a sense of direction, then fall, already lacking the strength to get up,” said Konstantin Ranks, a Russian science columnist quoted in the article.