Pets, peepers and the Great American Eclipse
It’s not just humans who will be affected by the Great American Eclipse coming Monday — expect animals to act strangely too.
Anecdotal evidence and a few scientific studies suggest that as the moon moves briefly between the sun and the Earth, causing a deep twilight to fall across the land, large swaths of the animal kingdom will alter their behavior.
Eclipse chasers say they have seen songbirds go quiet, large farm animals lie down, crickets start to chirp and chickens begin to roost.
Elise Ricard, public programs supervisor at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, recalled the eerie silence that accompanied the start of a total eclipse early on a June morning in 2012.
“I was sitting on a beach with my back to the jungle, and if you know anything about jungles, they are not usually quiet,” she said. “But to suddenly hear all those noisy birds get quiet as the eclipse got close, that was a powerful sensory experience.”
Doug Duncan, director of the Fiske Planetarium at the University of Colorado, Boulder, has had a few strange run-ins with animals over his many years of eclipse chasing.
He saw a line of llamas gather together to see a total eclipse with him and his fellow astronomers in Bolivia.
When he was viewing a different eclipse from a boat near the Galapagos Islands, he saw dozens of whales and dolphins swim to the surface of the ocean five minutes before the eclipse began. They hung out there until five minutes after the eclipse, before returning to the watery depths, he recalled.
Totality — the time when the face of the sun is fully covered by the moon — only lasts a few minutes, but scientists say it is still capable of affecting animals who use light cues to help them decide what to do and when.
“Certain stimuli can overrule normal behavior without affecting an animal’s daily physiological rhythms,” said Joanna Chiu, who studies animal circadian clocks at the University of California, Davis. “It is not surprising that the eclipse will temporarily affect animal behavior, but it is unlikely to affect their internal clock or their behavior in the long run.”
Protect your eyes
While Lodi won’t get the full effect of the solar eclipse, area residents will still be able to see a show — and local experts are warning residents to protect their eyes.
“Retinal damage from the sun can occur rapidly in 1 minute or less when gazing directly at the sun, even during an eclipse,” said Dr. Craig Snider, chief of ophthalmology at Kaiser Permanente South Sacramento.
The damage can be longterm, he said. The sun’s high energy, particularly ultraviolet radiation and light in the blue, green and violet wavelengths, damage the eye’s photoreceptors and supporting cells in the retina.
“Since the retina, like the film in a camera, is where the image of what we are viewing is focused, damage to this area of the eye can cause solar retinopathy with a resultant blind spot in the center of the vision,” Snider said. “There is no demonstrated effective treatment for solar retinopathy, although the blind spot often, but not always, gradually resolves on its own over the course of about one year.”
Anyone wishing to look directly at the eclipse must purchase specially made eclipse glasses — not sunglasses or even welding goggles — to protect their eyes, he said. Look for eclipse glasses that adhere to the ISO 12312-2 international safety standard, he said. They use a special filter to protect the retinas.
The World of Wonders Science Museum is selling eclipse glasses that meet these safety standards for $1 per pair while supplies last. They’re also more than willing to work out discounts with schools or teachers who want to get glasses for their students, education director Nick Gray said.
Anyone who purchases eclipse glasses from another distributor should take care to make sure they have been certified by the ISO. The American Astronomical Society offers a list of reputable distributors on its website,
Even looking at the sun for less than a minute without eclipse glasses can scorch the retinas, and it often takes a day or two for the blind spot to form, Gray said.
Those who can’t get a pair of safe eclipse glasses can still enjoy the eclipse with a pinhole camera made from two pieces of white cardboard or two sheets of white paper, Snider said.
“Make a single small pinhole with a pin or thumbtack in the middle of the first card. With the sun behind you, hold the first card with the pinhole above your shoulder so that the direct sunlight strikes the backside of the card and hold the second card in front of you about 18 inches in front of the first card,” he said. “You should be able to see the image of the sun projected onto the second card.”
Local residents can also visit the website of the Stockton Astronomical Society at
to learn how to make a sun funnel, another safe indirect viewing instrument.