How do animals react during a solar eclipse?

Looking on any social media platform today will give you a pretty good idea how people across America are responding to the solar eclipse, but what about the animal kingdom?

Those without the opposable thumbs needed to tweet their witticisms at the trending #Eclipse2017 are unlikely to be found donning cardboard solar-safe sunglasses or joining the mass of spectators gathering in car parks, football stadiums and designated viewing spots.

Instead, it seems, we can expect certain animals, who rely on the Sun to dictate their Circadian rhythms, to make a swift exit.

It is believed that bees will return to their hives, and cicadas will go quiet. There are reports of cows lying down, or going back into their barns, believing it to be night, and some claim that chickens will likewise go to roost.

A study into the behaviour of Colonial Orb-Weaving Spiders revealed that the spiders can be seen to dismantle their own webs, bit by bit, during the period of darkness, known as totality.

Reports also suggest that birds will stop singing ­- or, rather, it is the sound of diurnal birdsong that will briefly cease. Yet the flipside of this is the potential for nocturnal animals to put in a brief appearance.

Noisy crowds of observers are unlikely to hear the crickets who suddenly begin chirping, but they may notice the occasional hoot of a suddenly-woken owl.

Bats are reported to have previously been seen leaving their caves, hunting, only to return with the unwelcome re-emergence of sunlight.

In Zimbabwe in 2001, a group of sleeping hippos were seen to wake during the day as an eclipse took place, and start walking to the water, which they inhabit normally at night.

Perhaps less excitingly, people watching the eclipse itself should expect to share the experience with mosquitoes, midges, and other night-time insects.

Previously, a whole host of demonic animals and monsters would be blamed by ancient cultures for the existence of an eclipse. Although we're not likely these days to put the sudden loss of light down to an angry bear taking a bite out of the sun, as the indigenous Pomo of North Carolina once did, reports still circulate of animals behaving in all kinds of weird and inexplicable ways.

Giraffes and llamas have been said to run around frenziedly, and astronomer Doug Duncan saw whales breaching and dolphins also coming to the water's surface at the Galápagos Islands.

The California Academy of Science reports: "As the sky darkens and the temperature drops, birds reportedly stop singing, spiders may tear down their webs, and gray squirrels retreat to their dens, among other observed behaviors", although they add, "Much of these reports, however, are anecdotal or documented with captive animals."

The rarity of the event means that there's little concrete evidence and so researchers are encouraging people to take to the iNaturalist app, in which they can observe and record the behaviour of animals around them during the eclipse, effectively setting the record straight via 'crowdsourced research'.

Woc Colburn, a researcher at Nashville Zoo, which will be tracking observations in posts which tag the zoo on social media, told the Washington Post: “Sometimes you have great research ideas and just need people to do the observations. That’s not going to be a problem [on] Monday.”