Across Mexico, the US, and Canada, inside a ribbon of land stretching 155 miles wide but more than 4,000 miles long, tens of millions of people craned their necks, tilted their heads to the sky and watched in wonder as the day turned to night.
What many saw on Monday was a phenomenon like no other: the Moon moving between the Earth and the Sun, extinguishing its light in a total solar eclipse.
The path of totality spanned the continent, beginning over the warm sands of a Mexican beach town and darkening the skies above the crashing waters of Niagara Falls before ending its journey on the shores of Canada’s Newfoundland.
During a solar eclipse, when the sunlight suddenly disappears for some time during the day, how the living world experiences it is also a matter of thought.
The solar eclipse occurring on April 8, 2024, will bring complete darkness in some parts of North America. Although a total solar eclipse lasts only for a few moments, it has a long-lasting effect on humans and animals also, but it is difficult to predict how animals will behave when it becomes dark during the day. Animals rely on the 24-hour biological clock, also known as the circadian rhythm, to regulate their daily behavior of waking, foraging, hunting, and sleeping.
A solar eclipse that occurs at any one place every several decades disrupts this clock for a few moments. Cecilia Nilsson, a behavioral ecologist at Lund University in Sweden, says, “Light is an important signal that helps plants and animals.” A New England entomologist named William Wheeler tried a hundred years ago to find out what animals do when the Sun disappears during an eclipse.
They placed advertisements in local newspapers and appealed to people to come during the solar eclipse of 1932 to observe how the behavior of animals changed during those few moments when the sun sets during the day. In this effort he found 500 stories related to animal behavior. In these, information was found about birds, insects, plants, mammals, owls and bees. The owls started hollering as soon as it got dark while the bees started returning to their hives. When a solar eclipse occurred again in August 2017, scientists repeated the experiment once again. This time its results were even more shocking. As soon as it got dark, giraffes started running around nervously, tortoises started mating in the South Carolina Zoo, bumblebee bees in Oregon, Idaho and Missouri stopped buzzing. Scientists also showed interest in the solar eclipse that took place on April 8, 2024 and they made good preparations to see every moment of this astronomical event.
Scientists have appealed to people to keep an eye on any strange behavior in animals during this period. South Carolina zoo animals monitored during the 2017 solar eclipse. Before and after the start of the eclipse, the behavior of 17 species of animals kept in the zoo was found to be different from the rest of the days; the reactions of the animals were divided into four categories- Some animals remained normal, some animals started acting as if it was evening, some animals got disturbed and started behaving in strange ways. Hartstone-Rose says some animals, like grizzly bears, remained completely indifferent when experiencing a rare event like a solar eclipse.
The nocturnal birds seemed completely confused by this incident. All of them started behaving the same way during the day as they do at night. But when the sunlight came back after a few minutes, their behavior became abnormal. Giraffes, which are generally very peaceful animals, get startled and start running during a solar eclipse.
The most strange behavior was seen in the giant tortoises of Galapagos. Hartstone-Rose says, “Normally, turtles are inactive creatures, they rarely show themselves, but during the eclipse they showed a big change, they became more active and when the eclipse reached its peak they started mating with others. When a solar eclipse occurs, most of the birds either start flying very low or they stop flying here and there and look for shelter.
Different birds show different reactions during a solar eclipse. As the sun begins to set, western meadowlarks move rapidly towards the trees and stop chirping. American goldfinch and song sparrow make loud noises during eclipse. During solar eclipse, fishes start looking for places to hide and spiders destroy their webs.
Bumblebee bats stop buzzing as soon as it gets dark due to the sun disappearing during an eclipse. The solar eclipse of April 8, 2024 was the last total solar eclipse visible from the United States before the year 2044. For this reason, the behavior of animals could be specially monitored this time.
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