![]() “These crops would have been broken and dampened by hail,” the report reads, “damaged by immersion in fields and contaminated by insect feces rich in bacterial and fungal microorganisms.” Marr imagines the Egyptians, denied the protein of fish and cattle, rushing out to save their fallen crops and taking what they could salvage into granaries and underground storage places. The hail devastated the seasonal food supply, and then came the eighth plague, locusts that ate up the last standing crops and any seedlings. Then came the seventh plague – the hailstorm that beat down on man and beast and “every herb of the field.” It’s still found in the Middle East and Africa. Marr says that culicoides are weak fliers and probably could not have reached the Hebrew land of Goshen, which was about 100 miles north of Memphis, the ancient capital.įor the sixth plague, which caused boils to break out on humans and animals, Marr hit upon glanders, a highly contagious airborne bacterial disease that can also be spread by direct contact with flies. Just why the Jews and their animals were spared is a little difficult to explain scientifically. He was looking for diseases transmitted by culicoides, and he found two: African horse sickness and bluetongue, which affects cattle and sheep. Department of Agriculture on Plum Island. The fifth plague – the disease that affected only hoofed animals – led Marr to the animal disease center run by the U.S. Swarms of flies, the fourth plague, found a similarly fertile breeding ground in the wasteland of dead frogs and fish – their natural predators. ![]() ![]() Searching through the world of vermin, he hit upon culicoides (also called no-see-ums), an insect that fits the itch profile and exhibits other crucial behavior: it lays its eggs in dust, and the larvae feed on decomposing detritus – like the remains of fish and frogs. Next came the third plague, when the dust of the land turned into lice. Meanwhile, there were no frogs to eat the insects, so they proliferated like mad. The lack of oxygen must have finally forced the frogs out of the water – but since these amphibians can’t last for long on land, they died, too. “The algae threatened the frogs as well,” Marr says, “but for a while they could breed unhindered by the fish that would otherwise have eaten them.” – starring algae, bacteria, insects, viruses and molds:Īs other scientists have noted, the “bloody” rivers and ponds could have been caused by red algae, which sucked all the oxygen out of the water and produced toxins that killed the fish. ![]() Here is the scenario that Marr and Malloy lay out in their paper ![]()
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