Comparing Social Media Observations of Animals During a Solar Eclipse to Published Research

A solar eclipse is a naturally occurring phenomenon where, for a brief moment, the moon passes in front of the sun and obscures light, which turns a normal sunny day into one of night-time like darkness. In August of 2017, America experienced its most recent solar eclipse since 1979. This specific solar eclipse, also known as the “Great American Solar Eclipse,” was able to be seen in almost every part of the United States, and had manufactured a great deal of talk and various interesting phenomenon. Being a zoology major, I was intrigued when I read this article by Robert Ritson, Dustin Ranglack, and Nate Bickford that compared social media’s observations of animals during a solar eclipse to published research.

 Most people who own any kind of pet have seen their animal react in strange ways, but, “solar eclipses offer a unique opportunity to evaluate the relative influence of unexpected darkness on behavior of animals due to their sudden interference with local light levels and meteorology,” and stimuli such as “temperature, weather, light, lunar and seasonal cycles, seismic activity, and perturbations to their circadian rhythm” can all have a bizarre effect on pets and any other undomesticated animal (Ritson et al. pg. 1). The purpose of comparing social media observations to that of published research is that “anecdotal observations have the potential to expose behaviors or species not currently addressed in the literature” and add to a conversation that wonders about the effect solar eclipses can have on behavior (Ritson et al. pg. 2).

For the experiment, the researchers created a Facebook page and obtained 685 observations from the general public of about 48 different types of animals, and compiled 169 observations of about 131 different species from the published literature (Ritson et al. pg. 3, 6). But, in order to observe any kind of correlation between action, species, and the eclipse, Ritson and his team divided the observations into four behavior classifications: vocalization increase, vocalization decrease, activity increase, and activity decrease; and classified the types of animals into amphibians, birds, fish, invertebrates, mammals, and reptiles. 

Then, they analyzed all of the animals and their behaviors and found that, for the social media group, the most common action for amphibians was vocalization increase (100%), for birds it was activity increase (31.7%), for fish it was activity increase (100%), for invertebrates it was vocalization increase (64%), for mammals it was activity increase (64%), and, for reptiles, their most common behavior was activity increase (100%). In the literature pool of observations, the most common behavior of amphibians was vocalization increase (60%), of birds was activity decrease (38.7%), of fish was activity decrease (70.6%), of invertebrates was activity decrease (51.2%), of mammals was activity decrease (48.5%), of reptiles the behaviors activity increase and activity decrease were both equally observed (50%). 

Conversely, the least common behaviors seen through social media, for the animals that didn’t have 100% observations of an action, were activity decrease in birds (17.3%), activity decrease in invertebrates (2.9%), activity decrease of mammals (7.4%). And the research group’s least common behaviors for their observed animals were activity decrease and vocalization decrease in amphibians (10%), vocalization decrease in birds (14.5%), activity increase in fish (29.4%), vocalization increase in invertebrates (7.3%), vocalization decrease in mammals (6.1%).

There are various reasons why solar eclipses affect animal behavior, “brief changes in temperature and wind speed are sensed by animals and, in combination with reduced light, are interpreted as the beginning of nocturnal changes or large storm” (Ritson et al. pg. 9). But, of course, the actual response to the change of environment differs for each animal depending “on their specific life history and behavioral patterns associated with nocturnal changes” (Ritson et al. pg. 9). Furthermore, some of the major differences of the observations between the literature and the social media accounts may be due to the general public’s expected novice ability with regards to data collection and determining what is “abnormal” for the observed animals. 

Moreover, Ritson, Ranglack, and Bickford have concluded that “more research is necessary to disentangle the numerous influences responsible for these observed behaviors,” and that “both the literature and anecdotal observations that behavioral responses of many animals to solar eclipse are highly dependent on the specific animal in question” (Ritson et al. pg. 10). So, it can be difficult to accurately affirm that an overall type of animal will have a certain reaction to a solar eclipse since behavior is almost impossible to generalize across a population. According to the researchers, “in order to make reasonable conclusions about an animal’s behavioral response to a solar eclipse, a detailed understanding of its life history and prevailing environmental conditions during the period are necessary,” and that “future experiments should seek to implement new methods and technologies for recording animal behavior, such as GPS transmitters, thermal cameras, drones, etc.” (Ritson et al. pg. 10).

By: Alexis Fowler, University of Florida Zoology Major

Figure 1. Nikk Valentine. (2017). Howling Wolf.

References

Ritson, R., Ranglack, D. H., & Bickford, N. (2019). Comparing Social Media Observations of           Animals During a Solar Eclipse to Published Research. Animals (2076-2615), 9(2), 59.           https://doi.org/10.3390/ani9020059

Picture by Nikk Valentine: https://flic.kr/p/227XbRy