Remember
this: In mysteries there is always a pattern, if not a pattern, a subtle nuance
that almost goes undetected if not for the astute investigator; otherwise you
are screwed Sherlock. Besides its fun to play Nancy Drew sometimes.
First
off let me say I was a little disappointed by the lack thereof literature on
moose physiology, function, body systems such as digestion and its deviations
due to disease, reproduction, and environmental factors, etc. Maybe I wasn't looking in the right places? I felt like I was
walking through a horrible moose Sahara where the moose was in the witness
protection program. What does the moose have to hide?
Missouri knew that
the moose population was declining but since last year it was a drastic 35 %
which caused them to wake up on that I guess. Some days I swear these states
are trying to ruin hunting to some degree by screwing around until things look
dire or is it just me?
I recently came
across an article (everywhere on the internet) that stated the moose in
Missouri were disappearing. It was a great dumbfounding mystery. I soon read the
general consensus was climate warming, ticks, and the unknown were to blame.
In response to this
mystery the state of Missouri has decided to shell out 1.2 million dollars to
start an investigation. I wanted to inspect this situation much closer to see
what I could surmise. Believe it or not this is probably not the first time
this kind of behavior or result has happened to the moose. Referencing data
from previous scientific inquests can help build a case as to why. Even if it is
pure assumption on my part why can’t I play the investigator in what is now
Moose Forensics 101? It’s not going to hurt anything. I did see it mentioned
that this was not an applicable CSI case because of what I guessed to be the
helplessness of smart people to solve a moose death problem. I bet that made a
lot of important people feel more than inadequate. I argue that point because
there is mystery, dead bodies with DNR chalk lines and no explanations. For fun
I decide what a huntress might be thinking if she were trying to play Nancy
Drew under a tree in a boreal forest while hunting moose and googling on her
cell phone to find the same animal she is after may not be there in the woods. Going
on what we know about moose let us look at the known evidence be it fractured.The only thing that sticks out is more than one moose dying in the same place. Whether this is at the same time I do not know.
Evidence #1:
Diet: Moose are
ruminants that eat a variety of plant material. Their diet consists of wood
foliage, aquatic plants, lichen, grasses, and roots.
Here I would like to
say that lichen, fungi, and algae are present in the hindgut of a moose. The
moose eats bark. Lichen occupy bark in large numbers if the light is favorable
along with other conditions. Lichen is made of algae and fungi. The moose is
eating bark because the moose needs the lichen that is growing on the tree? The
algae, fungi, and protozoa
perform many functions in the hindgut. Sometimes it’s the little things that
are crucial. If this staple is missing in bulk from the moose diet there may be
problems with digestion or even absorption/production of Vitamin K and Vitamin
B. This is one of the limited articles I found on ruminant digestion.
http://physrev.physiology.org/content/78/2/393.full
http://physrev.physiology.org/content/78/2/393.full
Personal story: Had
a client once that came in with a sick dog who had eaten rat poison. It was
mostly too late to make the dog vomit then administer activated charcoal but
upon inspection and the fact she didn’t really know when the dog ate the rat
poison we tested the pack cell volume to find the dog was anemic. We ensued a
blood transfusion with a subsequent treatment of Vitamin K. (I say this because
if a moose in Missouri can have 50,000 ticks sucking it dry, be infected with a
tick-borne disease have anemia and show some data that its Vitamin K levels are
low then I would say ~let’s consider it in the name of scientific
investigation). Besides the more parasites you have the more nutrition is lost.
Personal story: Once
saw a cat almost suck dry by a flea infestation. I itched for two weeks.
Evidence #2:
Physiology: Moose
have a four compartment stomach consisting of the rumen, omasum, abomasum, and
the reticulum. Being foregut fermenters, the moose forces the regurgitated food
back up from the stomach into the mouth so they can chew for up to seven hours
to digest properly. Moose have bacteria in their gut that helps absorb these
nutrients and synthesize essential amino acids, vitamin B, Vitamin K, and
volatile fatty acids. These bacteria produce acetic acid, propionic acid, and
butyric acid from the cellulose of plant material that are broken down into
energy. In my reading ruminants completely depend upon the microbial flora
present in the rumen or hindgut for cellulose digestion. The rumen contains
various bacteria, protozoa, yeast and fungi. Ruminants produce large amounts of
saliva that help with fermentation and act as a buffering agent. Fermentation
from these processes produces organic acids and maintains the pH of the rumen
fluids.
I was reading on the
Moose in Minnesota website that there is a known trend for moose to move from
one location to another because I go by their phraseology, “In the 1980’s moose
began appearing in the Pembina Hills area of northeast North Dakota, and
expanded to the south. In the early years of the 2000’s moose began appearing further
west and further south.” There was also the note of warmer temperatures having
some influence on mortality rates but there was a discrepancy in the
fluctuation of temperature from one location to another.
There was a previous
GPS collar project from 2000-2007 performed by the University of North Dakota
led by Rick Sweitzer and James Maskey. The
dissertation done by Maskey was not moving. I wouldn’t suggest bothering to
read it. This project admitted the moose were recently colonizing the area
which implied movement yet again. They ruled out river flukes but there was a
mention of brainworm. This brainworm is a small parasitic nematode that infects
ungulates. Its choice host is the white tail deer that doesn’t suffer from the
brainworm but other species do that involve neurologic damage that lead to
death which is affectionately known as “moose sickness”.
The Canadian
biologist Roy Anderson identified brainworms in 1963. The brainworm female lays
eggs in the blood vessels and venous sinuses and subdural space of the white
tail deer’s brain. Here is the difference in non-deer ungulates. The adult worm
does not produce eggs and the animal become ill. This makes the moose an
aberrant host. The way the moose could get infected is the white-tail deer,
after gestating the brainworm larvae and its subsequent infection into slugs
and snails could be eaten by the moose where the food is retained for up to
seven hours in mastication marathon. The brainworm has plenty of time to
migrate to brain parts unknown before defecation occurs.
I was also reading
an article entitled, Maple Syrup, Moose and the Local Impacts of Climate
Change points out climate yet again. In this article it stated that climate
change was causing milder winters which in turn lead to better foraging in
places reduced snow pack would usually cover making pathogens and pests. Of course there was the point in this article
of doing long term studies for real-life complexities. It was bizarre that
moose were found in maple syrup production problems. That would be a concern if
the brainworm is able to reproduce itself faster due to the availability of
ground cover so it can continue its life cycle during mild winters where
foraging is not hindered. I wondered what the likely suspects were:
Building the Case
Part 1: The Suspects.
Suspect #1:
Climate: If the
moose is use to a colder climate and had problem with thermoregulation in
warmer climate I could see where this would bother it but would it kill the
moose just on its own? (I am thinking pig here because they don’t do well in
hot weather unless they have mud). It’s got something to do with pigs not being
able to sweat.
I suspected climate
change was an initiator of a series of biological events based around food,
parasites, disease, weather, stress, migration, poison, DNA
disturbance/interference.
Suspect #2:
Parasite: Here we
have the brainworm that the moose gets from the White-tail deer/slug/snail hosts.
Could this infection and subsequent inability to help the brainworm thrive cause
the moose to die via illness?
There is also the
tick to be considered. Ticks during the summer usually pick a spot in wooded
areas where they go through their life cycle. If it’s warm enough there is a
tick explosion where offspring might fall on you like a sky diver or as you
walk through grass or brush jump on you. Once on and attached they have all
kinds of cooties they can transmit to you that cause arthritis like symptoms,
flu-like symptoms, malaise, and sometimes death. I mention cows here because
Moose inhabit areas with cows and white-tail deer that have been known to
transfer disease.
There is also
Setaria spp. which is a filaroid nematoide that lives in cattle inside of the
abdominal cavity. It has a microfilaria stage where the parasite swims around
in the blood. The Mosquito is the bug of choice to transmit the disease by
taking a blood meal from a cow. (This is so like heartworms in a dog.)These
parasites migrate to the head and mouthparts of a cow. Upon necropsy the worms
are found in the peritoneal cavity. These are supposed to be nonpathogenic
parasites but if it looks guilty be suspicious. I have seen a ball of migrating
or dying worms block up the heart and digestive track pretty much killing the
animal.
Suspect #3:
Hunting: This is not
the case it would seem but it would pose the question if the State of Missouri
already knew there was a problem with its moose why did they not freeze the
hunting season a while ago? Was it monetarily based because they already knew
moose numbers were limited and people wanting the meat would take the chance at
losing money on a wild goose (moose) chase?
Suspect #4:
Predation: This was
also ruled out. Why? Because the State of Missouri already knew moose numbers
were down. Low food might cause the predators to migrate away to find better
prey. Also Missouri is no fan to wolves. Unless Missouri is going to put a
great big fence up to keep the immigrant wolves out I don’t think they can stop
them from migrating back in unless they have Wolf Border Patrol. Lions?
Coyotes?
Nope. The powers
that be decided they didn’t think predation was the culprit but I am not ruling
them out just yet.
Suspect #5:
Spontaneous abortion:
This could be due to disease in the infected mother. Spontaneous abortions have
been known in deer, caribou, and elk when they are menaced to great levels by
humans and predators. Brucellosis has been known to spontaneously abort Elk
calves.
Suspect #6:
Sterility: When you
have low numbers of moose living in one area that are not migrating out the
gene pool becomes smaller which make the moose ripe for disease to take
advantage of their systems because they have not developed disease resistance
strategies through natural selection.
Personal story: This
reminds me of the commentary on early Americans meeting the Spaniards. They
didn’t know what smallpox was or STD but one hand shake and well placed rug
killed a whole lot of people.
Suspect #7:
Migration: Maybe the
moose decided things sucked in Missouri and walked over to North Dakota? It
could happen!
Suspect #8
Disease: Here we
could list all the disease of the tick from Lyme disease, Erhlichia, Spotted
Rocky Mountain Fever, etc.
Personal story: I
worked as an office manager for a mixed animal practice for ten years. This Rottweiler
breeder came in with a litter of three month old puppies. The veterinarian
orders some tests but the breeder was too cheap to get the needed ones. It was
proven the Parvo virus was not in the puppies. The breeder ordered all pups to
be euthanized because he didn’t pay for failure. The veterinarian lied (very
illegal practice for one to do but he got away with it) and kept one pup alive
which he wasn’t supposed to do. He then after treating the pup for free turned
the pup over to the breeder who immediately had it euthanized by another doctor
because he was afraid of spreading something to his other litters. Per another
veterinarian checking additional pups they found out it was nothing more than
E. coli because the guy had treated lumber for kennel flooring. He wasn’t
properly cleaning or disinfecting the wood so the pups made themselves sick
from unsanitary conditions. All it would have took was better communication and
looking at the environment instead of just the symptoms.
There is also the
worry of Bovine Tuberculosis but a necropsy of lung tissue could rule that out.
This disease was also being spread as published in a research article in
Veterinary Medicine International Vol. 2011 entitled, Preventing the
establishment of a Wildlife Disease Reservoir: A Case Study of Bovine
Tuberculosis in Wild Deer in Minnesota, USA by M. Carstensen and M. W. DonCarlos
(what a name?!)
The way this was
discovered was a beef cow at slaughter in Wisconsin had thoracic lesions upon
processing. It was traced back to a herd in Minnesota where more of the cows
were positive. A deer 1 mile away was collected then tested only to find it was
positive too. The powers that be decided the deer got infected by spillover from
the infected cattle. I did glean that a total of 9.783 deer from surveillance
methods were tested in northwest Minnesota for bTB and yielded 27 infected
deer. These lesions would be exhibited on the ribcage, lungs, diaphragm, or
lymph nodes. Once again if the moose is sensitive maybe its symptoms aren’t the
same? If this isn’t the guilty party at least you got an education on Bovine
TB. It’s real and it’s out there like Mad Cow. The only problem with conditions
like these is sometimes you don’t really get to find out where Pathogen Zero comes from or who germinates
it first. Moose are like big cows but not really quite the same. Just look at
it. It’s the alien of the ruminant family.
Suspect #9
Invasive species:
The Foxtail (Setaria) Species. I would think either eating it or someone trying
to poison it out of cattle grass whereby the Moose eats it second hand. That
might account for multiple moose in one area dying. Contamination of foodstuffs
or poisoned by nefarious weeds/plants. I wonder at this because most animals
kind of know what to avoid but when you’re hungry a moose could be like that
guy living in the bus on the movie, Into the Wild. He dies from dysentery
after eating the forbidden berries.
S. Faberii has
spread through parts of North America. It would seem that low temperatures keep
the seed dormant but once those temperatures change the seed may begin to grow
prematurely in these unstable climate times. I wonder what a forest fire would
do to that if the temperature were high enough.
Suspect #10
Startling: Scaring
Female Moose into abandoning young.
Suspect #11:
Drowning:
Self-Explanatory.
Suspect #12:
Agriculture: Farmers
using Monsanto corn or products that have been engineered to kill or ward off
pest/insects. Once again what if the GMO’ness of the corn or its altered DNA
does not agree with the DNA or even the four compartmental stomachs of the
moose? This could literally be poisoning the moose.
Personal Story: My
mother recounts back in the day when people actually got away with knife
fights, farmers used agricultural soda. If a farmer put it out on grass to make
it grow, he would be required to keep the cows off until there was a rain storm
to wash it in the ground. She noted there were several deaths upon licking at
such ground treatments. We know people still stock pile that kind of crap.
Suspect #13:
Human Development:
Pretty much this causes habitat loss, startling, and fluctuations in moose
economies.
Suspect #14:
Nutritional Stress:
See Digestion. I also would note here that White-tail deer do eat birds. Birds
are known to be reservoir for all kinds of nasty things from West Nile to
Salmonella. What if a moose started eating birds? Or something else when it
couldn’t find something else or was just bored?
Suspect #15
Monsanto corn or
other GMO crops: It could happen.
Suspect #16:
Reproduction rates
for non-sterile moose: There might not be enough females to breed to and have
calves.
Suspect #17:
Moose Calf Mortality:
I have found published papers from the Alaskan Department of Wildlife entitled,
Unusual Moose Morbidity and Mortality in Alaska where in 2005 a study
indicated that calves were indeed dying from bacterial peritonitis and
septicemia. Whether the calves got this from a tick borne disease or virus
(bacterial or otherwise) remains to be seen. A lot of them got eaten by bears
during calving but there was note of lethargic periods before becoming
recumbent the dying due to extreme cold temperatures.
Suspect #18:
Industry: Factory
waste sites active and abandoned; fracking, or mining activities that cause
second hand pollution and stress.
Suspect #19:
Lack of consistent
predation: This is pretty straight forward stuff. If you don’t have the right
amount of predators to pick off the sickly, odd or just bad DNA donors then
poor specimens might be walking around in the form of what appears to be
healthy moose. Natural selection did not get the chance to do its magic because
of some unknown interference that allowed a Bad Bull or Female Cow to breed,
have babies then pass on bad genes.
Suspect #20:
Bigfoot: Hey Bigfoot
could have run them to death like hunter tribes did back in Africa. The only
problem is before Bigfoot got a chance to gnaw off a piece humans showed up
pointing fingers while yelling, “Look! It’s a dead moose. What happened?” I
laugh at this because Matt Moneymaker and BoBo would probably theorize this is
a possibility. I still love the show thought.
Suspect #21:
Aliens *hahaah*I had
to it was funny. The mother ship has been coming to steal our food source.
Due to climate changes, the
moose who is problematic with thermoregulation and stress suffers from a
lowered immune system.
This immune system once faced with
lack of necessary food sources like lichen from trees that harbor alga and
fungi for hind gut process of digestion inhibits the necessary processes of
digestion. Anemia caused by entering tick hotspots with subsequent tick-borne
infections and carriage of essential molecules by moose blood cells would lower
the threshold of the immune system also. Malabsorption of nutrition that
provides Vitamin B as an energy source and Vitamin K for blood coagulation and
metabolic pathways which occur in the hindgut could render the animal
lethargic. Climate changes also make the conditions right for the life cycle of
the brainworm which needs warmer temperatures to cycle through to settle in the
moose brain where it isn’t well received due to not being able to reproduce
eggs which compounds the already lowered immune system. Given that there were
several moose carcasses in the same area the idea not to rule out something in
the environment that could have contaminated or poisoned the moose should be
considered. (Excluding vehicle collisions, predators, and hunting.) Rubbing off
hair due to parasites should be considered but whether or not it’s a chemical
or other contaminates should be ruled out. There is always the “unknown”.
Written
by W Harley Bloodworth
~Courtesy
of the AOFH~
