How Do Animals React During a Total Solar Eclipse?

When a total solar eclipse transforms day into night, will tortoises start acting romantic? Will giraffes gallop? Will apes sing odd notes?
Researchers will be standing by to observe how animals’ routines at the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas are disrupted when skies dim on April 8, The Associated Press reported. They previously detected other strange animal behaviors in 2017 at a South Carolina zoo that was in the path of total darkness.
“To our astonishment, most of the animals did surprising things,” said Adam Hartstone-Rose, a North Carolina State University researcher who led the observations published in the journal Animals.
While there are many individual sightings of critters behaving bizarrely during historic eclipses, only in recent years have scientists started to rigorously study the altered behaviors of wild, domestic and zoo animals.
Seven years ago, Galapagos tortoises at the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, South Carolina, “that generally do absolutely nothing all day ... during the peak of the eclipse, they all started breeding,” said Hartstone-Rose. The cause of the behavior is still unclear.
A mated pair of Siamangs, gibbons that usually call to each other in the morning, sang unusual tunes during the afternoon eclipse. A few male giraffes began to gallop in “apparent anxiety.” The flamingos huddled around their juveniles.
Researchers say that many animals display behaviors connected with an early dusk.
In April, Hartstone-Rose’s team plans to study similar species in Texas to see if the behaviors they witnessed before in South Carolina point to larger patterns.
Several other zoos along the path are also inviting visitors to help track animals, including zoos in Little Rock, Arkansas; Toledo, Ohio; and Indianapolis.
This year’s full solar eclipse in North America crisscrosses a different route than in 2017 and occurs in a different season, giving researchers and citizen scientists opportunities to observe new habits.
“It’s really high stakes. We have a really short period to observe them and we can’t repeat the experiment," said Jennifer Tsuruda, a University of Tennessee entomologist who observed honeybee colonies during the 2017 eclipse.
The honeybees that Tsuruda studied decreased foraging during the eclipse, as they usually would at night, except for those from the hungriest hives.
“During a solar eclipse, there’s a conflict between their internal rhythms and external environment,” said University of Alberta's Olav Rueppell, adding that bees rely on polarized light from the sun to navigate.
Nate Bickford, an animal researcher at Oregon Institute of Technology, said that “solar eclipses actually mimic short, fast-moving storms,” when skies darken and many animals take shelter.
After the 2017 eclipse, he analyzed data from tracking devices previously placed on wild species to study habitat use. Flying bald eagles change the speed and direction they’re moving during an eclipse, he said. So do feral horses, “probably taking cover, responding to the possibility of a storm out on the open plains.”
The last full US solar eclipse to span coast to coast happened in late summer, in August. The upcoming eclipse in April gives researchers an opportunity to ask new questions including about potential impacts on spring migration.
Most songbird species migrate at night. “When there are night-like conditions during the eclipse, will birds think it’s time to migrate and take flight?” said Andrew Farnsworth of Cornell University.
His team plans to test this by analyzing weather radar data – which also detects the presence of flying birds, bats and insects – to see if more birds take wing during the eclipse.
As for indoor pets, they may react as much to what their owners are doing – whether they’re excited or nonchalant about the eclipse – as to any changes in the sky, said University of Arkansas animal researcher Raffaela Lesch.
“Dogs and cats pay a lot of attention to us, in addition to their internal clocks,” she said.

More than a dozen tigers were incinerated after the animals contracted bird flu at a zoo in southern Vietnam, officials said.
State media VNExpress cited a caretaker at Vuon Xoai zoo in Bien Hoa city saying the animals were fed with raw chicken bought from nearby farms, The Associated Press reported. The panther and 20 tigers, including several cubs, weighed between 10 and 120 kilograms when they died. The bodies were incinerated and buried on the premises.
“The tigers died so fast. They looked weak, refused to eat and died after two days of falling sick,” said zoo manager Nguyen Ba Phuc.
Samples taken from the tigers tested positive for H5N1, the virus that causes bird flu.
The virus was first identified in 1959 and grew into a widespread and highly lethal menace to migratory birds and domesticated poultry. It has since evolved, and in recent years H5N1 was detected in a growing number of animals ranging from dogs and cats to sea lions and polar bears.
In cats, scientists have found the virus attacking the brain, damaging and clotting blood vessels and causing seizures and death.
More than 20 other tigers were isolated for monitoring. The zoo houses some 3,000 other animals including lions, bears, rhinos, hippos and giraffes.
The 30 staff members who were taking care of the tigers tested negative for bird flu and were in normal health condition, VNExpress reported. Another outbreak also occurred at a zoo in nearby Long An province, where 27 tigers and 3 lions died within a week in September, the newspaper said.
Unusual flu strains that come from animals are occasionally found in people. Health officials in the United States said Thursday that two dairy workers in California were infected — making 16 total cases detected in the country in 2024.
“The deaths of 47 tigers, three lions, and a panther at My Quynh Safari and Vuon Xoai Zoo amid Vietnam’s bird flu outbreak are tragic and highlight the risks of keeping wild animals in captivity,” PETA Senior Vice President Jason Baker said in a statement sent to The Associated Press.
“The exploitation of wild animals also puts global human health at risk by increasing the likelihood of another pandemic,” Baker said.
Bird flu has caused hundreds of deaths around the world, the vast majority of them involving direct contact between people and infected birds.

How Do Animals React During a Total Solar Eclipse?