Abstract
When was the last time you were at the zoo? You probably saw lots of animals doing lots of different things there. We wanted to know what zoo animals do when a solar eclipse happens. People have observed animals during solar eclipses before. But these were mostly just casual observations.
We designed a study to observe 17 different types of animals at the zoo. First, we observed their normal behaviors. Then we recorded what happened during a solar eclipse. We saw that a lot of animals did something that wasn’t normal. Most of them started behaving like it was nighttime – in the middle of the day! Some of them even seemed anxious – like the eclipse stressed them out. This helps us understand how complex animal behavior can be.