How do eclipses impact animal behavior, and what observations have been made about changes in wildlife activity during these rare events?

Question

Is there any scientific evidence regarding this?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Animals have finely tuned circadian rhythms that respond both to sunlight and temperature. When the sun seems to disappear and the temp starts to drop at a time when it’s not supposed to, it can trigger all kinds of behavioral changes. Usually it’s just the animals starting to do whatever they normally do at night, e.g. fireflies glowing, but it’s also common for animals to display anxiety behaviors.

There is not a ton of research on this, since you can’t really create an eclipse as needed for your experiment, but there is some, for example: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7222787/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7222787/)