The astronomical event of total solar eclipse is all set to embrace our planet in eerie darkness on April 8. The phenomenon is not just a spectacle in the sky, but also a living study of how creatures on Earth react to drastic changes in nature.
Many studies on solar eclipses have shown in the past that animals and plants tend to behave differently during eclipses. Like during the 1851 eclipse in Sweden, a swarm of ants carrying food literally froze during the darkness of eclipse or a Massachusetts pantry was infested with cockroaches after the total eclipse in 1932.
Many such incidents have been recorded over time by scientists and researchers. Teams of researchers across the US have come up with plenty of studies about plant and animal behaviour during the last total eclipse in 2017, to see how creatures might react or change their reaction this time.
Total solar eclipse: Birds, bees, and plants have a natural response to the phenomenon
When it comes to birds, the common notion as per scores of studies has been that they go to a roost nearby and go completely quiet during the eclipse. However, a team of ornithologists from Cornell University found some birds to sing during the time of the eclipse, as per the recordings they captured during the 1963 eclipse.
In another study, conducted during the 2017 eclipse, researchers monitored flying creatures like insects and birds closely, using the weather radar network. They found the skies to be eerily quiet 50 minutes before and after the path of totality during the eclipse.
“Some previous research shows that insects react much more immediately to light cues, while birds are more like, ‘What’s going on?’” said Cecilia Nilsson, a biologist at Lund University in Sweden.
However the 2024 eclipse will be occurring during the spring, and the North American eclipse of 2017 took place in the fall season, which is migration time for many birds. Many birds, as per Nilsson migrate at night and tend to migrate more during the spring. Hence, abrupt darkness may have a different effect on birds this time.
Similar signs were detected by honeybees when a crowd-sourced compilation of observations from a 1932 eclipse showed that a swarm of some 200 bees were “apprehensive” in the minutes before totality. Another observer reported that as darkness increased, the number of outgoing bees decreased, but they returned in much larger numbers.
In some reports, it was also found that bees stopped buzzing altogether around flowers during the totality. But the bees that were hungrier were less shut down as per those who weren’t.
Daniel Beverly, a plant ecophysiologist at Indiana University, studied how sagebrush plants in Wyoming reacted during the 2017 eclipse. A total eclipse last passed over Wyoming in 1918, though it traversed different parts of the state.
He and his team observed that photosynthesis plummeted during totality, then took hours to recover from the complete absence of sun for a while.
(With inputs from agencies)
