Written by Kellar Nelson
Photo by Ty Northcutt
TA: Joe Kokenge
There’s a big problem in Missouri this year. An unusually dry summer caused a drought in many parts of the state, causing water levels to decrease. The water that remained in river and creek beds became stagnant and overcome with bacteria. As deer drank this water, they also consumed the bacteria. This particular type of bacteria attacks the immune system and intestine of the deer, leading to death. This has affected about one-third of the state deer population and is known as blue tongue disease.
The way this disease works is that it makes the deer unable to digest any food and they eventually starve. This could be seen as natural selection in action as a way of controlling expounding deer populations that have been observed in Missouri for many years.
2 comments:
I liked this post. It's really interesting and newsy.
As a hunter, should I be worried that I shot a deer with blue tongue? If you eat a deer that was shot before it died of blue tongue, would you get sick? Blue tongue in Missouri deer is a very troubling issue to me. True blue tongue is probably helping to control the population, but I would consider shooting deer to be a more humane way to kill deer rather than deer starving to death.
Post a Comment