This weekend, over 900 pigs were found floating dead in a river near Shanghai. The count is now up to nearly 3,000 pigs.
The cause of the event is still not known. Authorities did find a virus in a water sample from Huangpu river called porcine cirovirus, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua. The virus affects pigs but does not spread to humans.
A video of the clean-up looks like something out of a sci-fi horror film:
The pigs started turning up on Thursday near a local water treatment plant, but clean-up efforts did not begin until a few days later when the scope of the problem was realized, The Global Times reports.
Huangpu is an important source of drinking water for the city, so workers are moving quickly to remove the bloated carcasses from the river. Pictures show blue-suited men armed with rakes fetching the water-logged animals.
According to the FT, tags on the pigs' ears showed that the animals came from Jiaxing, a neighboring province of Shanghai. Farmers from the area are known to dump dead pigs into local rivers, even though Shanghai's agricultural commission has warned against this practice, according to Xinhua.
Below are some pictures of the incident:
