10,000 Wildebeest Die in Mass Drowning

How sad! Scores of wildebeest washed up dead at a bend in Kenya's Mara River after some 10,000 of the animals drowned in a bizarre mishap there last week. The deaths, which occurred over the course of several days, are said to account for about one percent of the total species population. As the animals passed through southern Kenya during their annual migration, part of the herd attempted to cross the fast-moving Mara at a "particularly treacherous" point, according to Terilyn Lemaire, a conservation worker with the Nairobi-based Mara Conservancy who witnessed the incident. "Once they jumped into the water, they were unable to climb up either embankment onto land and, as a result, got swept up by the current and drowned," she wrote in an email to National Geographic News.