How does bird behavior change during a solar eclipse?

When a total solar eclipse occurs, animals at many zoos have many strange actions that surprise researchers .

While millions of people across North America will look up to the sky to admire the total solar eclipse on April 8, some scientists are interested in behavioral changes in some animals, especially animals. especially flying species , affected by this natural phenomenon.

Scientists will closely monitor the behavior of birds as the sun gradually "disappears" during the day. (Photo: Yunus Malik/Shutterstock.com).

A team of researchers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is keeping a particularly close eye on birds, bats and insects, after these creatures displayed some rather strange behavior during the recent total solar eclipse. This most happens in North America.

Andrew Farnsworth, lead author of the study on flying animal behavior during the 2017 solar eclipse, said: "At dusk, insects, birds and bats will swoop to the ground to sleep or prepare for the However, during the 2017 solar eclipse, we noticed a very unusual and reduced number of insect and bird flight movements as the light faded and the sun suddenly disappeared. ".

The upcoming solar eclipse gives the team the opportunity to further study these unusual changes.

To do this, they are planning to use weather radar stations in the eclipse's path in the US to measure aerial activity. By eliminating signals from weather phenomena, they were able to measure the movements of flying animals - like birds - over short periods of 3-4 minutes.

Then, at sunset, they will measure their activity again to compare the slightest changes in behavior during the total eclipse.

There were only eight stations installed along the path of the 2017 eclipse. The next time there will be 13 stations, scientists hope they will have a more complete picture of the animals' behavioral changes. fly before the changes of sunlight.

The strange behavior of birds during a solar eclipse may be related to their reaction to light. (Photo: The Washington Post).

'It is very difficult to control light at a large scale,' said behavioral ecologist Cecilia Nilsson, who led the 2017 study, 'and this unique natural phenomenon is helping us establish a giant "experiment".

During the last total solar eclipse that appeared in the US in 2017, animals at many zoos had many strange actions that surprised researchers, such as: turtles suddenly swayed, giraffes gathered and galloping, baboons in captivity suddenly groom themselves violently, spiders untangle their webs, some amphibians suddenly make strange calls, bees fly back to their nests.