Wild animals and pets may start behaving strangely during today's solar eclipse

• A total solar eclipse will be visible in North America today.
• Animals may start acting weirdly as the moon blocks out the sun. 
• Scientists aren't completely sure how eclipses affect animal behavior.

For millions of people across North America, day will turn into night on Monday as the moon crosses between the Earth and the sun.

While most of us are expecting the upcoming solar eclipse, wild animals and pets are blissfully unaware of the rare cosmic event.

As we turn our eyes to the sky (protected by appropriate sunwear) and everything goes dark, animals may start behaving strangely — although scientists aren't quite sure what to expect.

Reports during previous eclipses have told tales of giraffes going crazy, turtles mating, and dogs cowering.

But that evidence "could reasonably be regarded as anecdotal from a scientific perspective," Adam Hartstone-Rose, a professor of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University who studied this topic, told BBC Science Focus.

Here are some behaviors spotted during previous solar eclipses, and what scientists will be looking out for this time around.

Birds may fall silent

Hartstone-Rose and colleagues studied animal reactions at the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, South Carolina, during the 2017 eclipse. Among 17 species they studied, they found some trends that we can expect will pan out during this eclipse.

One is that animals will start their bedtime routines as the world goes suddenly dark,

Previous studies have for instance suggested that birds will fall suddenly silent or start to roost, per The New York Times — though other studies suggested they continued to sing, the Times reported.

Honeybees may also be seen tucking themselves into their hives, while moths and nighttime-migrating birds may take flight, according to a post from the University of Syracuse.

Night-time vocalists like crickets and frogs, on the other hand, might see this as their time to shine, and their noises may start to rise as the eclipse reaches totality.

Some animals may show signs of anxiety

Another category of behaviors Hartstone-Rose spotted during 2017 the eclipse is stress.

One example, said the professor, is among giraffes.

"During the peak of the eclipse, the giraffes started running around like crazy and in a potentially dangerous way," Hartstone-Rose told BBC Science Focus.  

"In the wild, giraffes are pretty calm animals; they're kind of gangly and delicate. They really don't do crazy behavior unless they need to, and so the only time I've ever seen giraffes running around is if they're startled by a predator or maybe a vehicle or something like that," he said.

Thankfully, that behavior subsided as soon as the eclipse ended, he said.

Dogs have also been reported to look nervous during eclipses, some whimpering, some falling silent, per The Times.

That may be more related to seeing their owners gathering in groups, sharing their excitement, and looking up at the sky in mass, than anything else, M. Leanne Lilly, a veterinary behaviorist at Ohio State's College of Veterinary Medicine, told The Times.

"That can make any of our domestic animals feel like things are not as safe and predictable as they are supposed to be," said Lilly.

The anxiety response to eclipses is "a bit more mysterious," said Hartstone-Rose to The Guardian.

"It could be the animals are aware of some kind of disparity going on. If it all of a sudden seems dark, my dog, who is very food motivated, would worry we'd forgotten a meal for him, so that might be going through some of these animals' heads," he said.

Tortoises may start mating

Among the most bizarre reactions Hartstone-Rose and colleagues spotted during the 2017 solar eclipse in the Riverbanks Zoo was a pair of particularly amorous Galapagos tortoises.

"They started mating behavior. They literally started breeding in front of our eyes," he told BBC Science Focus.

Other animals also started acting out. A male gorilla charged a glass enclosure and flamencos grouped closer together, The Guardian reported.

Some siamang gibbons started screaming and barking in a way that had never been recorded before, per the BBC.

"We were able to statistically show that the vocalizations during the eclipse were significantly different than any other time we had ever been able to record their vocalization," Hartstone-Rose told the BBC. "That was pretty remarkable."

Scientists are jumping on the opportunity to study eclipse animal behavior

While these behaviors provide a rare snapshot of how sudden darkness can affect animals, there are surprisingly few studies looking at animal behavior during a solar eclipse, according to the University of Syracuse.

Among the reasons for this are that eclipses are rare, and short-lived, and studying the widespread behavior of animals is notoriously difficult.

Still, scientists have been gearing up to gather as much information as they can during the approximately four minutes the eclipse is due to last.

One such study is NASA's citizen science Eclipse Soundscapes, a recreation of century-old a large-scale study carried out during the 1932 eclipse. Volunteers registered with the study will be asked to log recordings, data, and their own experiences to a database.

Hartstone-Rose is also carrying out his own study during the cosmic event. Scientists and a group of volunteers will be studying animals at the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas.

"For this one moment, on this one particular day, everybody is going to have this shared experience," Hartstone-Rose told The Guardian.

"There's something beautiful about that, and sharing it with our animal brethren just adds to it," he said.