Raining animals
Rain of fish in Singapore, as
described by local inhabitants
Raining snakes, 1680.
Raining animals is a rare
meteorological
phenomenon in which flightless animals "rain" from the sky. Such
occurrences have been reported in many countries throughout history. One
hypothesis offered to explain this phenomenon is that strong winds traveling
over water sometimes pick up creatures such as fish or frogs, and carry them
for up to several miles.
[1]
However, this primary aspect of the phenomenon has never been witnessed or
scientifically tested. Sometimes the animals survive the fall, suggesting the
animals are dropped shortly after extraction. Several witnesses of raining
frogs describe the animals as startled, though healthy, and exhibiting
relatively normal behavior shortly
after the event.
In some incidents, however, the animals are frozen to death or even completely
encased in ice. There are examples where the product of the rain is not intact
animals, but shredded body parts. Some cases occur just after storms having
strong winds, especially during tornadoes.
However, there have been many unconfirmed cases in which rainfalls of
animals have occurred in fair weather and in the absence of strong winds or
waterspouts. Given that waterspouts do not actually lift anything (the water
droplets visible in the column are merely condensation) and even the most
intense will only raise the surface of the water by less than a meter, it lacks
plausibility to suggest that they are capable of lifting fish from below the
surface of the water and high into the sky. Tornadoes do not really 'lift'
anything up into the column, but pick debris up and throw it outward on
ballistic trajectories, where it lands in a destructive manner. Frogs, if they
were to move in this way, would not be intact at the end of their journey, and
fish, respiring aquatically, would likely asphyxiate long before their landing,
which would be just as bad as it is for frogs. Despite the seeming scientific
plausibility of the waterspout theory, upon more rigorous inspection it fails
completely.
[2]
The
English language idiom "it is raining
cats and dogs", referring to a heavy downpour, is
of uncertain etymology, and there is no evidence that it has any connection to
the "raining animals" phenomenon.
This is a regular occurrence for birds, which can get killed in flight, or
stunned and then fall (unlike flightless creatures, which first have to be
lifted into the air by an outside force). Sometimes this happens in large
groups, for instance, the
blackbirds falling from the sky in
Beebe,
Arkansas,
United States on December 31, 2010.
[3]
It is common for birds to become disoriented (for example, because of bad
weather or fireworks) and collide with objects such as trees or buildings,
killing them or stunning them into falling to death. The number of blackbirds
killed in Beebe is not spectacular considering the size of their congregations,
which can be in the millions.
[4]
The event in Beebe, however, captured the imagination and led to more reports
in the media of birds falling from the sky across the globe, such as in
Sweden and
Italy,
[5]
though many scientists claim such mass deaths are common occurrences but
usually go unnoticed.
[6]
History
Rain of flightless animals and objects has been reported throughout history.
In first Century AD, Roman naturalist
Pliny
The Elder has documented storms of frogs and fishes. In 1794, French
soldiers witnessed fall of toads from the Sky during heavy rain at Lalain, near
French city of
Lille.
In 1857, people from
Lake County in
California
reported fall of Sugar crystals from the Sky.
[7]
Explanations
Tornadoes may lift up animals into the air and deposit them
miles away.
French physicist
André-Marie Ampère was among the first
scientists to take seriously accounts of raining animals. He tried to explain
rains of frogs with a hypothesis that was accepted by other scientists of the
day. Speaking in front of the Society of Natural Sciences, Ampère suggested
that at times frogs and toads roam the countryside in large numbers, and that
the action of violent winds can pick them up and carry them great distances.
[8]
More recently, a scientific-sounding explanation for the phenomenon has been
developed that involves tornadic
waterspouts.
[9]
However, waterspouts are very limited in their ability to lift objects into the
air, managing only drops of water and possibly light surface debris (leaves,
etc), which are quickly jettisoned along ballistic trajectories. Under this
hypothesis, waterspouts or
tornados transport animals to relatively high altitudes,
carrying them over large distances. It was mistakenly thought that the winds
were capable of lifting and carrying the animals over a relatively wide area
and allow them to fall in a concentrated fashion in a localized area.
[10]
More specifically, it has been erroneously claimed that some tornadoes can
completely suck up a pond, letting the water and animals fall some distance
away in the form of a
rain of animals.[11]
This hypothesis 'appears' supported by the type of animals in these rains:
small and light, usually aquatic,
[12]
and by the suggestion that the rain of animals is often preceded by a storm.
However the theory does not account for how all the animals involved in each
individual incident would be from only one
species, and not
a group of similarly-sized animals from a single area. However, this waterspout
hypothesis is not supported by the evidence. It has persisted in the popular
imagination by a misunderstanding of what waterspouts are, and their lifting
capability. Waterspouts are not capable of lifting significant weight, nor of
transporting it any significant distance. People mistakenly believe that the
column of the waterspout is composed of water sucked up by the vortex, but this
is not the case. The column of a waterspout consists of condensation from the
surrounding air.
Doppler Image from Texas showing the collision of a
thunderstorm with a group of bats in flight. The color red indicates the
animals flying into the storm.
In the case of birds, storms may overcome a flock in flight, especially in times
of migration. The image to the right shows an example where a group of bats is
overtaken by a thunderstorm.
[13]
The image shows how the phenomenon could take place in some cases. In the
image, the bats are in the red zone, which corresponds to winds moving away
from the radar station, and enter into a
mesocyclone
associated with a tornado (in green). These events may occur easily with birds
in flight. In contrast, it is harder to find a plausible explanation for rains
of terrestrial animals; the enigma persists despite scientific studies.
Sometimes, scientists have been incredulous of extraordinary claims of rains
of fish. For example, in the case of a rain of fish in Singapore in 1861,
French naturalist
Francis de Laporte de
Castelnau explained that the supposed rain took place during a migration of
walking
catfish, which are capable of dragging themselves over the land from one
puddle to another.
[14]
Thus, he argued that the appearance of fish on the ground immediately after a
rain was easily explained, as these animals usually move over soft ground or
after a rain.
Occurrences
The following list is a selection of examples.
Fish
1555 engraving of rain of fish
- Singapore,
February 22, 1861[15]
- Olneyville, Rhode Island, May 15,
1900[16]
- Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, July 1, 1903[17]
- Marksville, Louisiana, October 23, 1947[18]
- Kerala, India, February
12, 2008[19]
- Bhanwad, Jamnagar, India, Oct 24,
2009[20]
- IIT MADRAS, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, Sep 12, 2013[21]
- Lajamanu,
Northern Territory, Australia, February 25 and 26, 2010,[22]
- Loreto, Agusan del Sur, Philippines,
January 13, 2012[23][24]
- The
yearly Lluvia de Peces in Yoro, Honduras
Frogs and toads
Others
- An
unidentified animal (thought to be a cow) fell in California ripped to
tiny pieces on August 1, 1869; a similar incident was reported in Olympian
Springs, Bath County, Kentucky in 1876[27]
- Jellyfish
fell from the sky in Bath, England, in
1894[28]
- Spiders fell
from the sky in Salta Province, Argentina
on April 6, 2007.[29]
- Worms dropped from
the sky in Jennings, Louisiana, on July 11, 2007.[30]
- According
to a video, Spiders
fell from the sky in Santo Antônio da Platina, Brazil, on
February 3, 2013.[31]
(However, it has been suggested as falling from a mass web between
elevated poles.)
SOURCE:
www.wikipedia.com
