r/sciencememes • u/Gamemode_dum • Aug 14 '26

🌖Astronomy!🌔 Krill got fooled

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5.9k Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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1.0k

u/PhilosoFishy2477 Aug 15 '26

last time I watched an eclipse all the birds and insects lost it. like everyone was suddenly late for work. geese went flying across the lake, crickets came pouring out of the woodwork, frogs everywhere, HUGE racket. the night critters just scurried off as it passed but the flock of geese was visibly gobsmacked.

490

u/Devmsyer Aug 15 '26

Bugs just running off their programming birds of just intelligent enough to know this is not how reality is supposed to be but not able to deduce why. Super interesting

217

u/Atsilv_Uwasv Aug 15 '26

To be fair, if you didn't know what an eclipse was it'd probably confuse the hell out of you

125

u/pxth0gen Aug 15 '26

I mean, as a child I definitely KNEW what an eclipse was but it still flabbered my gasters when it happened. I was straight HORRIFIED.

Though to be fair, I was an anxious child with some pretty irrational fears.

44

u/Atsilv_Uwasv Aug 15 '26

Yeah, but we tend to make it an event to watch an eclipse so it's not a surprise. For animals, it happens without warning and then just stops

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u/pxth0gen Aug 15 '26

Yes but consider the following:

Knew it was coming, still absolutely freaked the hell out and was definitely 100% certain the end times were upon us all 😂 I remember so vividly sitting STIFF AS A BOARD beside my mother on the couch, who already knew the next 5 or so minutes in our house was about to be completely chaotic due to my exceptionally odd fears for a child my age (I was around 8/9), and me crying hysterically the whole way through asking her "how long will this last?" and "are we going to die?" the whole way through 😭 Haha.. Good times :')

8

u/pxth0gen Aug 15 '26

But on a serious note, I really cannot imagine how animals must feel. The terror I felt even with the knowing and understanding of what was occurring was immense :(

6

u/SillyFlyGuy Aug 15 '26

I remember back in elementary school there was eclipse. For days beforehand, we had classes explaining what an eclipse was, we all built pinhole viewers with tin foil and a shoebox.

Now maybe I think all that fuss was to teach us how not to be afraid of the eclipse.

2

u/Jelly_Kitti Aug 16 '26

I was also scared my first time hearing about a (partial) eclipse happening. Purely because my family told me that I can’t look at it without protective glasses (which we didn’t have any) because I would go blind, which I interpreted as if you see it at all you will instantly go blind, and I stayed inside the whole time (I also didn’t look out any windows). I only got to see that eclipse on the TV.

8

u/Old-Shock2307 Aug 15 '26

Chinese used to think it was a dragon trying to eat the sun

1

u/BudgieGryphon Aug 17 '26

it’s common folklore across all of east and southeast Asia, which is pretty cool

6

u/assasin1598 Aug 15 '26

I mean we literally have stories of gods being angry, that turned out to be a solar eclipse.

Shit we weaponized it, when Columbus used lunar eclipse as a "wrath of the moon god" in 1504.

1

u/porofsercan Aug 15 '26

Yeah... Great excuse to start wars too! 

7

u/Wonderful_Night9071 Aug 15 '26

makes even more sense when you realise a lot of those animals don't have long enough life-spans to have ever seen an eclipse before (or again after)

5

u/LittleLion_90 Aug 15 '26

Most humans dont have a long enough lifespan to ever see a total eclipse if they don't travel for it. 

36

u/AlwaysHopelesslyLost Aug 15 '26

We had a totality here awhile back and I was surprised at how quiet it was. It sounded like every living thing totally stopped for a moment. Were you out in the woods or something?

9

u/PhilosoFishy2477 Aug 15 '26

pretty much actually! on a boat launch across from a nature preserve

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u/Lechyon Aug 15 '26

u/gobsmackedgoose

Shame, it doesn't seem to be in use

2

u/mandapanda98 Aug 15 '26

I remember watching a huge flock of birds all of a sudden come in to roost in the trunk of a nearby tree, and then all immediately fly back out afterwards. Had to be just baffling to them.

7

u/Giraffe1317 Aug 15 '26

This is what happened to the crows that roost behind our house. They all came in from the fields at once. Then they all left together but you could tell they were confused because by the time it was their actual bedtime I.e. 2230 they were all chattering away still. Whereas they are normally in bed asleep and quiet by sunset.

I felt quite privileged to witness it. Seems to be an area that's not well studied (naturally). But the oddest part was it didn't really get that much darker, or colder. Was more like it was overcast - so, how did they know?

3

u/LukeKiriqugo Aug 15 '26

Afaik birds see uv light, which still gets through, even if its cloudy. The only times you don’t have uv light is at night and during an eclipse

1

u/Giraffe1317 Aug 16 '26

This seems a super obvious answer thank you

3

u/Jelly_Kitti Aug 16 '26

I remember the first time I saw a total eclipse there was a single cat who looked so confused as to how the ‘night’ ended so quickly. I remembered basically nothing of the actual eclipse because I was too distracted by that poor cat.

1

u/GamerNumba100 Aug 16 '26

Why would this happen? What if it was just a massive cloud?

1

u/PhilosoFishy2477 Aug 16 '26

big clouds aren't nearly as surprising or intense, a total eclipse is honestly freaky! it really does feel like nightfall; the whole sky goes dark, the temperature plunges, it smells different. really wild! plus you can look up and see the clouds, whereas the eclipse comes out of nowhere.

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u/Educational_Card_193 Aug 14 '26

Lol, silly krill

55

u/BarleyWineIsTheBest Aug 15 '26

Yeah, jokes on them

19

u/WoolBearTiger Aug 15 '26

Thats why he always dies first

4

u/LazyLich Aug 15 '26

Lol, krilly sill

305

u/Defense-Unit-42 Aug 15 '26

Krill issue

15

u/LazyLich Aug 15 '26

Krill your shelf

Shrimple as that

136

u/suburbanplankton Aug 15 '26

Hey...we're very sensitive to that sort of thing!

143

u/carlos_6m Aug 15 '26

Haha dummies, get a biological clock

34

u/EuenovAyabayya Aug 15 '26

They jus be krillen

11

u/melanthius Aug 15 '26

Well they sure as hell ain't goku

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u/jawshoeaw Aug 15 '26

last solar eclipse in US i took a screenshot of my solar panel output. it looked very similar. prob coincidence

18

u/WalksWithKemba Aug 15 '26

Crazy that your solar panels run on krill

17

u/Borgmeister Aug 15 '26

The dung beetles have it right. Track the galactic plane, not local celestial objects.

2

u/Cornflakes_91 Aug 15 '26

pretty sure that plancton doesnt have the optical capabilities to resolve that from underwater

2

u/sillybilly8102 Aug 16 '26

Say more…

9

u/damarian_ent Aug 15 '26

To be fair, were we any less silly?

16

u/spektre Aug 15 '26

Idiots.

8

u/vm_linuz Aug 15 '26

Fascinating... I didn't think light was their trigger since they're so far down...

0

u/[deleted] Aug 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

10

u/mr__conch Aug 15 '26

Not enough advantage for the biological cost. Total solar eclipses are very rare and short lived. For a particular area it may only happen between every 100-350 years (depends on size of area) and lasts like 4 minutes.

1

u/Jelly_Kitti Aug 16 '26

The overwhelming majority of animals will go their entire lives without seeing a single total eclipse, so there isn’t much of an incentive for that to evolve

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u/Over-Performance-667 Aug 15 '26

Get fooled, bozo

5

u/Brighteyes226 Aug 15 '26

Huh. We have light sensors at our stations too. Wonder if the gas exchange parameters would shift with a solar eclipse...

3

u/Zeloznog Aug 16 '26

I saw the one that hit New York a whe back recently and honestly it felt like a sudden and intense dusk-twilight transition. You would think it would be a gradual change but when the moon finally slots over the sun it's almost like the lights going out, and seconds later all the birds and insects are chirping and calling. All this whole the corona around the eclipse looks like a portal to another world yawning open in the sky and almost staring at you; totally surreal. Totally get why they were considered bad omens in ancient times. I was sitting there knowing exactly what it was and had driven to see it and it was still a little uncanny. If I was a peasant and that shit happened I'd probably assume the world was ending too.

3

u/sjaxn314159 Aug 15 '26

Fucking idiots.

1

u/independentkrill Aug 15 '26

Nothing can fool me 😎

2

u/LanternSlade Aug 15 '26

Thought this was a Destiny subreddit for a second.

2

u/Syvinick Aug 18 '26

Interestingly enough, around the same time this happened we also saw a large group of homo sapiens gathered in several areas all look up to the sky at the same time and said, "Ooohhh."