Hartstone-Rose Adam, Dickinson Edwin, Paciulli Lisa M, Deutsch Ashley R, Tran Leon, Jones Grace, Leonard Kaitlyn C
Department of Biological Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.
Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.
Animals (Basel). 2020 Mar 31;10(4):587. doi: 10.3390/ani10040587.
The infrequency of a total solar eclipse renders the event novel to those animals that experience its effects and, consequently, may induce anomalous behavioral responses. However, historical information on the responses of animals to eclipses is scant and often conflicting. In this study, we qualitatively document the responses of 17 vertebrate taxa (including mammals, birds, and reptiles) to the 2017 total solar eclipse as it passed over Riverbanks Zoo and Garden in Columbia, South Carolina. In the days leading up to the eclipse, several focal teams, each consisting of researchers, animal keepers, and student/zoo volunteers conducted baseline observations using a combination of continuous ad libitum and scan sampling of each animal during closely matched seasonal conditions. These same focal teams used the same protocol to observe the animals in the hours preceding, during, and immediately following the eclipse. Additionally, for one species-siamangs ()-live video/audio capture was also employed throughout observations to capture behavior during vocalizations for subsequent quantitative analysis. Behavioral responses were classified into one or more of four overarching behavioral categories: normal (baseline), evening, apparent anxiety, and novel. Thirteen of seventeen observed taxa exhibited behaviors during the eclipse that differed from all other observation times, with the majority (8) of these animals engaging in behaviors associated with their evening or nighttime routines. The second predominant behavior was apparent anxiety, documented in five genera: baboons (), gorillas (), giraffes (, flamingos (), and lorikeets ( and ). Novel behaviors characterized by an increase in otherwise nearly sedentary activity were observed only in the reptiles, the Galapagos tortoise () and the Komodo dragon (). While the anthropogenic influences on animal behaviors-particularly those relating to anxiety-cannot be discounted, these observations provide novel insight into the observed responses of a diverse vertebrate sample during a unique meteorological stimulus, insights that supplement the rare observations of behavior during this phenomenon for contextualizing future studies.
日全食发生的频率很低，这使得该事件对于那些受到其影响的动物来说很新奇，因此可能会引发异常的行为反应。然而，关于动物对日食反应的历史信息很少，而且往往相互矛盾。在本研究中，我们定性记录了17个脊椎动物类群（包括哺乳动物、鸟类和爬行动物）对2017年日全食经过南卡罗来纳州哥伦比亚河岸动物园和花园时的反应。在日食来临前的几天里，几个重点观察小组，每个小组由研究人员、动物饲养员和学生/动物园志愿者组成，在季节条件相近的情况下，通过对每只动物进行连续随意观察和扫描抽样相结合的方式进行基线观察。这些相同的重点观察小组在日食前、日食期间和日食刚结束后的几个小时内，使用相同的方案观察动物。此外，对于一种动物——合趾猿，在整个观察过程中还采用了实时视频/音频捕捉，以记录发声时的行为，以便进行后续的定量分析。行为反应被归类为四个总体行为类别中的一个或多个：正常（基线）、傍晚、明显焦虑和新奇。在观察到的17个类群中，有13个在日食期间表现出与所有其他观察时间不同的行为，其中大多数（8个）动物表现出与它们傍晚或夜间日常活动相关的行为。第二主要的行为是明显焦虑，在五个属中被记录到：狒狒、大猩猩、长颈鹿、火烈鸟和吸蜜鹦鹉。以原本几乎静止不动的活动增加为特征的新奇行为仅在爬行动物中观察到，即加拉帕戈斯象龟和科莫多巨蜥。虽然不能忽视人为因素对动物行为的影响，特别是那些与焦虑有关的影响，但这些观察为在独特的气象刺激下不同脊椎动物样本的观察反应提供了新的见解，这些见解补充了在此现象期间罕见的行为观察，以便为未来的研究提供背景。
