Residents in a Cumberland County, N.J., community were left wondering what caused dozens of birds to drop dead from the sky earlier this week.

Increased concentrations of red tide algae likely left hundreds of thousands of dead fish washed up over the weekend on Galveston beaches, the Galveston County Daily News reports.

Low to moderate concentrations of the neurotoxic algal bloom were the probable cause of the fish kill that left the huge numbers of dead shad - also known as Gulf menhaden - on the island's West End beaches, an official told the newspaper, after testing revealed the presence of red tide.

The Galveston Island Park Board of Trustees brought in extra workers to deal with the fish kill and said it would clear the fish away by Wednesday if there were no more fish kills.

The presence of the algae prompted the Texas Department of State Health Services on Monday to close what little oyster harvesting was ongoing by public lease holders in Galveston Bay, department spokesman Chris Van Deusen told the newspaper.

A mysterious disease has killed 68 cows during the last week in Cholistan, a private TV channel reported on Monday.

According to Geo News, the disease, which starts with a light fever that leads to fits in the cattle leading to their death, had killed several dozen animals over the last week.

The channel, citing local residents, said that due to a drought this year, the animals were being forced to drink dirty water. Zoology expert Ali Raza said that dirty water was causing stomach and liver diseases.

Meanwhile, the managing director of the Cholistan Development Authority said that a committee had been formed to investigate the death of the cattle.

Galveston -- Hundreds of thousands of dead fish have washed up on the beach in Galveston, where crews went to work Monday to remove the dead fish.

Peter Davis of the Galveston Island Beach Patrol said Sunday the small shad fish likely were killed by low oxygen levels in the Gulf of Mexico.

Davis estimated hundreds of thousands of fish have died.

Galveston County health officials said the water is fine for beachgoers.

Biologist Steven Mitchell with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said calm conditions and summer heat may have contributed to the fish kill.

He said there's a possibility of a dead zone in the water off Galveston.

Testing is expected this week.

Germany is being invaded by what is estimated to be over a million raccoons. Worried residents have been driven to take extreme measures to deter or eradicate the furry pests, but experts fear the nocturnal marauders are here to stay.

A retired man in Harleshausen, a suburb of the central German city of Kassel, had nothing more in mind than removing the tarp covering his lawn furniture. But then a hissing animal with markings like a safecracker's mask shot toward him and sank its teeth into his left hand. It was a female raccoon intent on protecting her young, and she next attacked the man's foot. The struggle lasted a minute or so before the man staggered into his house bleeding.

That altercation is symptomatic of a nuisance that's spreading through the country. Procyon lotor, the common raccoon, is not native to Germany, but its range is increasing. The population will soon number over a million, according to forest biologist Ulf Hohmann.

These predatory mammals originally from North America can weigh over 10 kilograms (22 pounds). They're known for their intelligence, and many Native American legends assign raccoons the trickster role that Germans associate with Reynard the Fox in European fables. Both the real-life trapper Daniel Boone and the fictional hero of the Leatherstocking Tales novels wore fur caps made from raccoon pelts, easily identifiable by their bushy black and white tails.

The first raccoons were brought to Germany in around 1920 to be bred in captivity for their pelts. Their controlled introduction into the wild occurred on April 12, 1934, when Prussian hunting and game authorities released two pairs of raccoons near the Edersee, a reservoir near Kassel. Their stated purpose was to "enrich the fauna" of the area.

Exposure to radioactive material released into the environment have caused mutations in butterflies found in Japan, a study suggests.

Scientists found an increase in leg, antennae and wing shape mutations among butterflies collected following the 2011 Fukushima accident.

The link between the mutations and the radioactive material was shown by laboratory experiments, they report.

The work has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Two months after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in March 2011, a team of Japanese researchers collected 144 adult pale grass blue (Zizeeria maha) butterflies from 10 locations in Japan, including the Fukushima area.

When the accident occurred, the adult butterflies would have been overwintering as larvae.

In Komatsu city Ishikawa, more than 10,000 earthworms were found dead in a parking lot. Ishikawa prefecture is facing Japan / Korea Sea. Mr. Kobayashi is living near the parking lot. He comments he found earthworms dead in the evening of 8/5/2012. It kept increasing and now it's scattered around in the 250 m2 of the area. There are about 500 dead worms in the space for one car. Because 16 cars can park there, more than 10,000 worms are dead in the whole area including the passageway.

A former director of an insect's museum visited the place to comment it is rare to see this many worms dead at once. It's an ordinary type of earthworm. He assumes they came from the near greenery to the parking lot for water because of the intense heat and died there.

British honey shortages have been predicted this year by bee keepers after the wet summer weather has forced them to feed their colonies with emergency supplies of sugar and syrup.

Prolonged periods of rain since April has meant honey bees across the country have been unable to forage during the peak flowering season when they normally gather plentiful supplies of nectar to feed their broods of larvae and produce honey.

Bee keepers are now bracing themselves for some heavy losses in their bee colonies unless they can benefit from a change in the weather.

The National Bee Unit at the government's Food and Environmental Research Agency has issued a starvation alert warning that bees are at risk of starving to death due to the poor weather conditions.

Officials at the British Bee Keepers Association have also warned that honey crops this year are expected to be particularly poor.

Tim Lovett, the association's director of public affairs, said many key crops such as oil seed rape and fruit trees had flowered during the wettest periods, meaning bees were unable to gather nectar.

A unexplained illness has been plaguing the elk community of southern Sweden, with experts perplexed as to why so many are being found dead or dying.

The elk population around Blekinge in southern Sweden has been threatened by an unexplained disease.

14 adult elk have recently been found in the woods in severe states of paralysis, emaciation and blindness.

The blindness has resulted in some falling victim to traffic accidents; however experts have been left scratching their heads at to what is actually causing the illness.

"There is no scientific explanation," said Lennart Balk of the Stockholm University to the Aftonbladet newspaper.

Islamabad - The wild peacocks of Pakistan were dying in droves. Was the government covering it up?

That was the question Pakistanis were raising last week as reports persisted from the Thar desert area of southern Sindh province about peacocks whirling themselves to death in mad dances that appeared to have no earthly explanation.

By midweek, more than 120 peacock deaths had been reported - and the toll would keep rising - but the government would only acknowledge that 11 peacocks had died. Newspapers carried photos of children carrying corpses of the magnificently plumed fowl.

It turned out that the answer to the strange deaths was relatively simple: The peafowl were suffering from Newcastle disease, a contagious viral infection that causes dehydration, affects the brain and often causes the birds to spin.

The disease - known as Ranikhet in Pakistan - hit Thar and six other districts in Sindh. Thar alone is estimated to have 70,000 peacocks.

The peacock is wild in the province. Some poor villagers, including members of the Hindu community, keep the birds for their valuable feathers.