By Tim Binnall
Wildlife officials in Uruguay are attempting to get to the bottom of a rather macabre mystery surrounding thousands of dead penguins that have inexplicably washed ashore along the country's coastline. The unsettling case reportedly began approximately two weeks ago when the first of the unfortunate birds were discovered. What may have initially been dismissed as an isolated incident soon turned into a more serious matter as, over the next several days, more and more Magellanic penguin remains were found on beaches throughout the country with the number of dead birds believed to be somewhere around a staggering 2,000 in total.
The country's head of the Environment Ministry's department of fauna, Carmen Leizagoyen, noted that most of the downed penguins are juveniles and they appear to have perished in the Atlantic Ocean "without fat reserves and with empty stomachs." Suspicions that the animals could have fallen victim to bird flu appear to be unfounded as tests of their remains turned up no sign of the disease. Explaining that "it is normal for some percentage to die" during their annual migration, Leizagoyen ominously observed that the numbers found the beaches of Uruguay far exceed such expectations. Some possible explanations for the mass die off include a lack of food due to overfishing or inclement weather, though the cause of the curious case so far remains a mystery.