Animals reacted differently to the solar eclipse, and NASA wants your help to study them
Crying coyotes, screeching owls And the gorillas say… sleep. Animals reacted in strange ways to Monday's solar eclipse. While people across North America may have reacted to Monday's (4/8) total solar eclipse in a variety of surprising ways, humans aren't the only species to exhibit unusual behavior during the rare celestial event.
A team of 40 watched the animals grow at the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas Abnormal behaviors When the sun goes down during the day. “Our army of gorillas got up and walked towards the door as if it was time to fall into the night,” Dr John Griffion, who led the team, told Sky News.
“Our two flocks of flamingos came very close. They started yelling a lot more, and one of them started marching off, which is group behavior.” In a swamp in Nevada, researchers heard the coyotes whining again. The owl screeched and started flying around.
Kim Rosewall, a biologist who studies animals in Indiana, called the experience at X “unbelievable.” Although an eclipse occurs every 18 months, very Little is known about how animals function In this case. However, existing studies show that it works very strangely.
During an eclipse in Mexico in 1991, scientists They saw spiders tearing their webs In the dark part of the eclipse. As soon as the sun returned, they began weaving them again.
In Arizona, scientists collecting cicadas noticed that when the sun's brightness dropped by 50%, they stopped singing. It took 40 minutes for them to make noise again. and giraffes, baboons, gorillas and parrots Exhibit anxious behavior Researchers recorded how animals reacted at South Carolina's Riverbanks Zoo in 2017, according to the study, titled “Total Eclipse at the Zoo.”
Rainbow lorikeets become loud during an eclipse, followed by 'class silence'. The Giraffes 'start dancing in concert' And the baboons usually came together, though they broke up into small groups.
75% of zoo animals seem to have reacted to the eclipse. But animal responses to solar eclipses are relatively understudied. Now, scientists are asking for your help. Three major studies asked people to report their observations of animals, insects and birds behaving strangely during the eclipse.
NASA is now asking the public to help analyze their findings. The service says it will soon open a portal to its Eclipse Soundscapes website What the rare eclipse did to the animals.
