One think I have hears a lot of lately is that you should take pets inside during a total solar eclipse. The reasoning is that when it goes dark under the totality, animals will look at the sun and be blinded.
My thinking is that one simple way that this could be tested is put an animal in a room setup to look like outdoors, including natural level light. after they have been there for several hours to get used to it, shut the light off for several minutes and observe their reaction. Do they look around for the sun or not?
We had two dogs back in the last total eclipse here in UK, about a decade ago.
I noted the following with them..
They didnt panic in any way.
There was the standard reaction to darkened skies, the same as passing storms, "It went dark", and should they seek shelter...
They were amused a little by the fuss, but that was a separate family "Pack" thing, not event related, did they even make the connection to family pack and dark skies, probably, but I dont speak that fluent in dog?..
They both sniffed the air, which isnt looking up as some people say, its them raising the nose to as high as it can get, to sniff...[1]
The dogs I have known have always been able to sniff the change in air and accompanying smells, from rain, and to replicate that in human terms, if you ever had that long hot smell and sudden downpour, you know what I mean, that slight metallic tang to the air that is all fresh dug earth and wet grass that you get after such?.
My dogs have always, when downwind, been able to sniff storms in this way, several miles before us humans can.
They at that time had a sniff, to see if the dark sky was an approaching storm, noticed there wasnt any sizeable cloud, and sort of half moved "should we be seeking shelter about now" towards the door...
So no I dont believe there will be mass blinding's by the animals own actions.
Look around you today, do you see many crows or any other type of bird flying into telegraph pole because of flying blind?.
Nature has sorted out the problem by writing genetic code into animals "Dont look directly at the big glowy ball of fire"
However...
For their own protection.
Agreed, they should be left inside, in fact, some be confiscated and put in shelter for the event.
I watched with some amusement at the American response to the event "Live" from some camp-site where the BBC news OB unit was...
A Standing Ovation round of applause?..
Who for?.. The moon?.. are they anthropomorphising the whole moon-sun-thing?..
And then the bit I objected to...
MASS Postings of "Mummys likkle poodles" "enjoying" the event where handbag dogs who couldnt fight back were forced to look up at the sun wearing sunshades just for the shot.
Those are the ones needing protection from their owners.
The best small GIF image I saw was of a younger man standing looking at camera, then an old bald guy slowly passes in front...
Sun and Moon all in one.
I cant find it again, dont you just love how bloody vampires have taken over all the search terms?.
Anyways, I do not believe any animals in nature put themself in harms way during eclipse events.
But I do believe some may need protection from their human "Mothers", and I use that term very loosely?...
[1]Dog Conciousness is part sight and a whole lot of smell. More than that, more even than many people believe.
Dogs rely on their sense of smell like we rely on hearing, they also rely on hearing more than we human do, and I would estimate about 50-60% of dog experience is sound and smell related, where Humans is about 90% pure sight with accompanying sound these days.
Dogs can "Rewind" time in their own heads just by smell, to see who and what has passed this way, up to around 18hrs ago, sometimes even more.
