A report found that around 60,000 saiga antelope died in June in central Kazakhstan over the course of four days. The cause of their death is still a mystery. Although this is not the first time that thousands of saiga antelope mysteriously died in just a few days, conservationists are concerned about the fact that in case the trend continues then the critically endangered species may come to an end soon.

Scientists have been trying to find out the cause and solve the mystery but it isn't an easy task as a number of factors might be responsible for this problem.

According to some scientists either climate change or pollution is responsible for the collapse of the antelope population, where as others have argued that strangely lush and moist vegetation might have led to some digestive complications. There are many researchers who even put the blame on an unnamed rocket fuel spill in the animals' habitat.

While carrying out the investigation, researchers collected blood, soil, water, and air samples and the findings baffled almost everybody.

Investigators said that there are chances that they have found the silent killer of the rare animals. As per the environmental samples and necropsies, some otherwise harmless gut bacteria might have turned against the animals. As per scientists there were two key suspects: Pasteurella and Clostridia.