In 1939, 835 sheep were killed during  a thunderstorm in Pine Canyon, Utah.

That’s obviously super sad. But it’s even worse when you realize I don’t mean a bunch of thunderstorms  spread across all of 1939.

I mean in a single moment  of a single thunderstorm. 835 sheep were killed by a  single bolt of lightning. It’s safe to say this wasn’t an act of Zeus, Thor, or Cidolfus Telamon, but  what really happened here? It turns out, a classic bolt  from the heavens is far from the only way you can get struck by lightning.

And as those sheep learned, some of the  ways can also be far more dangerous. [♪ INTRO] Before we get into the story of the sheep,  let’s talk about what lightning even is. Earth’s air normally acts  as an electrical insulator. In other words, electrical charge  has a hard time moving through it.

So over time, due to little bits  of things constantly moving around, you’ll eventually get a  difference in charge built up between the bottoms of clouds and the ground. Like, a patch of cloud gets super negative, and the ground below it, by  comparison, is super positive. Once too much difference builds up, the atmosphere finds a way to  discharge it all and reset the system.

As you might suspect, the way it does  that results in a lightning bolt. But the lightning bolt you  see isn’t the whole thing. Before the visible bolt strikes, it’s  preceded by a bunch of invisible trails of ionized air called leaders  that start up in the clouds, and quickly creep downward on the hunt  for the best path to take to the ground.

Meanwhile, trails of air with the  opposite charge, called streamers, travel upward from the ground…and  objects just chilling out on the ground. Each of these trails represents a possible  path the eventual discharge can take. And wherever a leader/streamer pair connects, that’s where the visible lightning bolt appears.

Now, since lightning is looking  for the shortest path between the ground and the atmosphere, it does  tend to strike the tallest thing around. But not always. Lightning can strike a shorter object if  it’s closer to the lightning’s source, and also if there just so happens to be a  taller column of ionized air over its head.

Basically, the streamer shooting up  from your head gets an advantage… which for you would wind up  being a major disadvantage. A lot of lightning also just hits the ground. About eight million lightning  strikes hit the ground every day!

While that stat might make you want  to hide in your nearest basement, let me reassure you: Your odds  of getting hit by lightning in a given year are less than one in a million. And assuming you’re human, you’re not very likely to get killed if you  do get struck by lightning. 90% of all lightning strike victims survive, although you may have to deal  with some pretty bad side effects. Plus, not all lightning strikes are created equal.

The US’s National Oceanic and  Atmospheric Administration… better known as NOAA…has classified up to  five different types of lightning strikes, all of which can be dangerous. The one you’re probably  imagining is the direct strike. This is when lightning actually  hits an object head on.

If you were to get struck by lightning this way, some of the discharge would go along your skin, causing burns, and some would go  through your body, which is even worse. But while that sounds terrible, this is not the most common way to get struck by lightning. Even if you’re relatively close to  the bolt, it could miss you entirely.

Although even those near  misses can still be deadly. For an example, let’s look at  an animal you might think has a way greater chance of getting struck  by lightning than a human. The giraffe.

If you heard that “Giraffes are, like,  30 times more likely to get killed by lightning strike than  human”, just know that that’s based on a very small sample size. In 2020, two giraffes in South Africa  were found dead after a lightning storm. Due to the damage to the taller giraffe’s skull, it was obvious it had been directly struck.

But the other giraffe’s body, which  was found about 7 meters away, had no visible signs of damage. Somehow, the lightning still managed to get her. We’ll get back to exactly how later.

The second way you can get struck by lightning has to do with those  streamers I mentioned earlier. Every lightning bolt comes with  multiple streamers, and sometimes, even when the streamer over your  head hasn’t officially been chosen, it can still discharge. That means that you can get “hit by lightning” even if the main bolt struck some distance away.

Next, there are side flashes. These are why you’re not supposed to seek shelter under a tree during a thunderstorm. Even though the tree might be taller than you, if it happens to get struck by lightning, a portion of the current could jump from  the tree, across a bit of air, and into you.

That’s because lightning is always looking for the most convenient path to the ground. “Path of least resistance” kind of stuff. And the human body is a lot less resistant  to the flow of electricity than a tree trunk. Our penultimate type of lightning  strike is called conduction, and it’s why you’re not supposed  to shower during a thunderstorm.

Metal, water, and other good  electrical conductors are easy paths for lightning to take, so if  lightning happens to strike your water pipes while you’re showering,  you could still get electrocuted. Something similar happened to six  unfortunate cows in Australia back in 2018, who were all found dead, lined up  in a row at a barbed wire fence. The farmer originally  thought they’d been poisoned, but the most likely scenario is that the  fence got struck by lightning somewhere, and the current got carried however far  sideways until it went through the cows.

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Finally, there’s ground current, which  is where you can get struck by lightning without actually getting struck by lightning. This is what you really need to be careful of. Remember that second dead giraffe?

She was probably killed by ground current. In fact, ground current can be  blamed for a lot of animal death, including some really extreme examples. Like in 2016, when 323 reindeer were  killed in a lightning storm in Norway.

Or in 2021, when about 550 sheep were found dead after a thunderstorm in the country of Georgia. Sheep really seem to be the record setters, here. In 1918, the ground current generated  by just two bolts of lightning managed to kill 654 sheep on Mill Canyon Peak, Utah.

And as I mentioned in the  beginning, 835 sheep were killed by a single bolt of lightning  in Pine Canyon, Utah in 1939. According to one report, 15 additional  sheep were struck and survived. As did the human tending to them, who was inside a tent at the  time and got knocked unconscious.

Speaking of which: in humans,  ground current accounts for roughly half of all lightning deaths and injuries. It’s really dangerous, because it’s  caused by lightning deciding to move along the surface of  the earth after a strike, and jumping back up into  someone standing on the ground. Human and animal bodies are  generally more conductive than soil, and the more legs you have on the  ground and the farther apart they are, the worse it’s going to be for you.

That’s because the farther apart your legs are, the greater the voltage difference between them. And it’s the voltage that drives  a current through a circuit. In other words, by having more than one leg, you’ve basically turned your entire body  into a wire and increased the chance that the current decides to  move up one leg into your torso… where most of your important bits  are…before going back down into the ground.

The more legs you have, the  more ways that can happen. And the farther apart those  legs, the worse it’ll feel. As bipeds, we humans can do something  pretty simple to reduce our risk: pretend we only have one leg by putting  both as close together as possible.

It’s easier than trying to stand on one  leg for a whole thunderstorm, anyway. But if you’re not human … if you’re a  giraffe watching this video to learn how you can avoid being struck by lightning … First off, congratulations for learning English. Second, I’d suggest maybe  moving away from your friends, to only somewhat near something taller than you.

And if balancing on one leg  proves too difficult to master, maybe just lie down…preferably on a rubber mat. [♪ OUTRO]