At a Glance

Temperatures have reached as high as 120 degrees in parts of Australia.Heat and drought are drying up watering holes.Forty wild horses died of thirst and another 50 had to be euthanized.About 2,500 feral camels have been culled.

Australia's extreme heatwave is taking a devastating toll on animals.

Temperatures reached more than 121 degrees in some places Thursday as , according to Bob Henson, weather.com meteorologist and climate blogger at Weather Underground.

Thirst is suspected in the near Santa Teresa, about 50 miles from Alice Springs in central Australia, the Central Land Council said in a news release Thursday. Another 50 feral horses, or "brumbies," had to be culled, the council said.

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"Horses and other feral animals are dying of thirst and hunger because many reliable water sources, such as Apwerte Uyerreme, have dried up in the current heatwave and areas overpopulated by feral animals suffer erosion and vegetation loss. As horse carcasses foul water holes that native animals depend on these, too, die," the council's statement said.

The deaths of the horses came to light after .

Rohan Smyth of Santa Teresa told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ", so essentially they do have an impact on the environment, and they do use up the resources that other animals might use. But it's still pretty horrible to know that they've had to suffer in that extreme way."

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Feral horses, donkeys and camels are dying of thirst at another community, that isn't being named because officials are considering a cull there, too.

Ranchers in the Goldfields region of Western Australia say thousands of , ABC reported.

"There have been three very good years in the desert and the camels have been breeding up. At least one-third of the camels we're seeing are young camels and they're in shocking condition," Tim Carmody told ABC. "We've seen them on the lake where they've walked onto the lake trying to find water and a group of 36 all got bogged in one spot and we've had to euthanize them."

Carmody said about 1,200 camels have been shot on his property since the day after Christmas. Ranchers say another 1,300 camels have been culled on other properties in the past month.

Rancher Les Smith and his neighbors want the state government to conduct an urgent cull.

"They're multiplying every year, they're multiplying in the thousands, millions," Smith told ABC. "The other day there were 200 camels at one windmill. I only took a couple of packets of bullets out with me because I was fixing a windmill, and when I saw that mob I shot 31."

A young fan cools off a fountain in the hot conditions during day 11 of the 2019 Australian Open at Melbourne Park on Jan. 24, 2019, in Melbourne, Australia. (Matt King/Getty Images)