
An eclipse gave researchers an inside look at how bees respond to light - shawn
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/busy-bees-take-break-during-total-solar-eclipses-180970502/?no-ist
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VLM
I bet the kids got stung more too. Somewhere between urban legend and
scientific fact is honeybees are very good at predicting rain and
thunderstorms and will stay in the hive when rain is on the way (and it gets
dark in severe storms...). I suppose to the bees, a total eclipse looks like a
very intense thunderstorm is about to smash into them, and that makes them
hide in the hive. The sting rumor is something to do with bored bees take on
guard duty so the law of averages is ten times as many guards means ten times
as many stings to innocent beekeepers. In summary most beekeepers know not to
work on their hives right before it starts raining and apparently it would be
advisable not to work on your hives before a total solar eclipse.

Hives cannot survive long in high humidity, if the interior of a hive gets wet
mold will set in rapidly so the bees will work extremely hard to dry the hive
out after rain if it gets wet; which probably explains the instinct to hide
and stay safe when its about to rain (or, much less often, eclipse)

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wil421
I was fortunate enough to be able to see the total solar eclipse in North
Georgia. It was kind of freaky when it started to happen. Roosters started
calling at the beginning, cicadas stopped, and I heard a very weird humming
sound. Once it was dark it seemed like all the insects and animals thought it
was night time.

I wonder if nocturnal creatures start coming out like bats.

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tzs
> I wonder if nocturnal creatures start coming out like bats

My guess would be no, because nocturnal creatures would be asleep when it
happens and so probably not even notice it.

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LiamPa
I would have thought that it’s the sun setting which causes them to wake
unless they have a perception of time which I don’t think they do.

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UI_at_80x24
It might, but I have an anecdote for you.

My pets had an expectation of events to happen at specific times. Dog would
sit by the door and 'expect' to see $family_member arrive home from
school/work. (noteworthy for those that had regular schedule and always got
home about the same time.)

My last cat expected to be fed at the same time every day. For the first
couple of years I had my cat, my job & routine were identical every day. Wake
at 6am, feed cat, goto work.

On weekends this bothered the cat so he would wake me up at 6:01 so he could
get his food. I hated that he would never let me sleep in. Fast-forward a few
months to the daylight-savings change; and then at 5:01 he started expecting
food. The damn cat had an internal clock that was very accurate.

So I am sure a lot of animals have internal clocks and don't solely rely on "%
of sunlight" to determine behaviour.

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LiamPa
The question is, could an animal do this with no natural light as humans
can’t.

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thaumasiotes
What do you mean, humans can't? They can and do.

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LiamPa
Not sure where you are located but there was a documentary last night on bbc
which demonstrated they can’t. Do you have examples where someone has been
able to do this?

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starpilot
The article really says bees stop flying any time it is dark, including at
night. There's nothing special about their behavior during eclipses here.

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sakebomb
Makes you wonder if light pollution is wrecking this process.

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jerf
There's a lot of orders of magnitude between a light-polluted night and even
an overcast day. Your really-quite-good eyes make the difference look much
smaller than it really is.

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dymk
Is it possible that a bee's eyes perform light-level normalization as well?

Low-intensity lights/screens (compared to the sun) wreck havoc on our
circadian rhythms, it seems plausible that it disrupts the (not just
circadian) rhythms of other organisms as well.

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slededit
An important question to answer is why this wouldn't be an issue with
moonlight.

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dymk
Sure. Perhaps there's something intrinsically different about moonlight -
humans don't have their circadian rhythms disrupted by it, like they do with
screens and artificial lights.

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Nition
This is something I've wondered about. People keep talking about how it's blue
light that keeps you awake, but moonlight is pretty bluish. Why would humans
have evolved to have that as the _don 't_ sleep wavelength?

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tylerhou
Moonlight is white, just like how the sun is white. The moon = blue, sun =
yellow connotations are mostly cultural.

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Nition
Just looked it up. Apparently it's due to the Purkinje Effect, i.e. "The
tendency for the peak luminance sensitivity of the human eye to shift toward
the blue end of the color spectrum at low illumination levels."

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stevenwoo
The general case they have noticed is nocturnal animals start to become active
during an eclipse and animals active during the day time start to shut down
like they would during night.

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akshayB
There can be a strong co-relation between sun-light and biological cycles or
even metabolism in different living organisms which we may not have
discovered. I have noticed that my neighbors dog would go insane during solar
eclipse and would start crying as soon as it was over, back in the yard
playing. Maybe other living organisms don't understand how eclipse works like
humans and they are just scared of unknown.

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angel_j
I witnessed a solar eclipse recently. That night (post eclipse), all the
cicada were chirping in perfect unison.

