Thousands of bees drop dead following 7.1 magnitude earthquake

A natural disaster or catastrophe can often have serious ramifications on the local ecosystem. Already-vulnerable species can be devastated by flooding, hurricanes, or volcanic eruption.

Over the weekend, the state of California and other parts of the west coast were struck by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake, which wrecked the environment and caused major damage to the region's infrastructure. However, homo sapiens weren't the only animal to suffer the consequences of the tremors.

Check out the strange video of the dying bees below:

On Saturday, July 6, social media influencer Khalil Underwood took to Twitter to share a video filmed outside his house, which shows thousands of bees dropping dead as a result of the quake.

In the clip, which already boasts over 261,000 views, Underwood zooms in to the ground of his back yard, showing great masses of bee carcasses, as well as a number of bees lying on the ground and vibrating.

A number of viewers advanced their own theories as to why the insects were dying en masse. For example, one Twitter-user with the handle @Trevor_The_Rat wrote: "My uninformed theory is that maybe the earthquake disturbed the hive and from the look of that live one, they thought the blacktop was the culprit and proceeded to try and ward it off by swarming it and they just tired themselves out and died...? [sic]"

Credit: 1957

There are no conclusive answers as to why an earthquake would damage a hive to this extent. However, one idea touted by zoologists and entomologists is that an earthquake might be capable of disrupting their electromagnetic navigation senses within their brains.

Check out the moment a live news broadcast was interrupted by the earthquake:

The 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck 11 miles off the north-northeast of Ridgecrest at 8:19 pm PST on Friday. This came approximately 24 hours after a 6.4 earthquake had hit nearby areas the morning before, the Daily Mail reports.

We may never know why the bees have acted this way, but it's bad news for a species which is already threatened by the possibility of mass extinction.