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[Shonai_Dweller]

Recently in my past couple of fortresses in various areas of various worlds in 42.x a wild animal will suddenly become injured. A jaguar, an elephant and just now a giant tick. The 'combat' report is consistant with a dwarf falling down a hole: 'The giant tick's fourth leg takes the full force of the impact and the part is smashed into the body, an unrecognizable mass!', etc.

At first I put it down to tree felling accidents. Or perhaps the beast dodged a hunter and fell off a cliff. However the giant tick which was smashed just now didn't survive. His body is nowhere near any tree felling operations, my only hunter is fleeing from an aardvark  on the far side of the map having run out of bolts.

So what's killing my wildlife? Anyone else notice unexplained deaths recently?

[FortunaDraken]

Yeah, they're falling out of trees. I've noticed it with cavern creatures that climb the walls (troglodytes and crundles being the main offenders) and anything that will climb a tree. They're getting up into the branches then failing a climbing roll when they change z levels which results in them falling out. If they're unlucky, they land badly and die, or send themselves into shock by crushing a hand or foot. I've watched a crundle fall about 4 z levels and end up crushing a hand into oblivion. He sat there in shock for awhile before moving on.

It's super obvious when you have a zone with a lot of trees and a nearby tower. I had a siege like that once and ever few ticks I'd have a zombie getting hurt due to falling out of a tree.

EDIT: Though when you say an elephant, I...have no answers.

[Naryar]

Stealth weremammoths.

I suppose they are failing their climb rolls and falling out of trees.

edit: ninja'd

[Bakaridjan]

Hmmm, I've seen it on at least one animal, but I have no trees on my embark. I suppose that neither proves not disproves the point. If it's happened once in 4 years with no trees and others are seeing it very often it is probably the trees and my case was something else. Or it happened and there are no trees so there must be some other explanation. I'll start paying closer attention.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Thanks for the replies. Yeah, it's probably tree climbing beasts in my case. There were lots of trees around the last couple of times I noticed it which is why I assumed my woodcutter had injured them accidentally.

Lots of elephants in current embark, will keep an eye on them and report any suspicious tree climbing behavior.

[PatrikLundell]

I assume elephants can be hoisted up into a tree when a sapling matures. I've seen a fair number of injury reports like this from the caverns, where the victims typically were troglodytes. It took a while to come to the conclusion that they'd fallen on their own, rather than having been attacked.

[FoiledFencer]

I've seen it with invading beak dogs - my fortress is in a forest, so I'm thinking the climbing theory sounds plausible.

[Sanctume]

I had a sappling grow and happened to kill a wagon passing by.  Now I have 'wagon wood'.