How Do Animals React During a Total Solar Eclipse?

TIME

When a total solar eclipse transforms day into night on April 8, researchers will be standing by to observe how animals’ routines at the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas are disrupted.

Transcript

00:00 While most people will be looking up at the sun during the April 8th total eclipse,

00:05 researchers at the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas will be looking at the animals.

00:09 Animal behavior is only actually a small part of the research we do.

00:12 Mostly we study skulls and we do dissections of animals.

00:16 Adam Hartstone-Rose is following up on studies done at a South Carolina zoo

00:21 that was in the path of total darkness in 2017.

00:24 There was just this amazing opportunity where we were in 2017 to see these animals,

00:30 interesting animals, and in this interesting phenomenon that was about to happen.

00:35 And so we put together a study during that and I think I basically became hooked.

00:41 There is lots of anecdotal evidence of animals behaving bizarrely during eclipses,

00:45 but more rigorous scientific study is newer.

00:48 One of the animals we watched was the Komodo dragon, which are magnificent.

00:52 They're the biggest lizard. They're amazing. They're a little bit scary, but they don't do anything.

00:57 Like in general, a Komodo dragon sits still for almost all hours of the day

01:01 and absorbs the sun and maybe is digesting.

01:05 The Komodo dragon we were watching before the 2017 eclipse, it literally didn't move at all.

01:10 We watched it all day Saturday. We watched it all day Sunday.

01:14 Then the eclipse was on Monday and just in those couple minutes during the eclipse,

01:19 it started running around and had a reaction.

01:21 Some of the animals behaved as if evening had come, so they went into their nighttime routine.

01:28 The gorillas, they spend their day outside and then at night they're moved into like an indoor enclosure

01:35 where they get their final food and then they go to sleep.

01:38 And in the middle of the day, the whole group of gorillas wandered over towards the enclosure

01:44 as if to be let in at night.

01:47 There's also a call for citizen scientists to observe animals, even your own pets.

01:52 This time around, we're going to look at some of the same types of animals.

01:56 So we're going to look at a different group of gorillas and see if they behave the same way as previously.

02:00 We're going to look at another group of giraffe.

02:03 It sounds like a lot of what we know about animal behavior during eclipses is hard to believe.

02:09 And yes, most of it is based on one person's observations of potentially one animal.

02:14 But the only way that we can confirm this stuff is to take every opportunity that we can

02:19 to go out and witness it ourselves.

02:22 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Category

Transcript

Recommended