Saturday, August 19, 2017

Your Pet's Safety During a Solar Eclipse

I'm sure you've all seen this image floating around your social media lately. 


Chalkboard full of lies according to NASA...


Where did it come from? Who wrote it? What are their qualifications? How do they have such cute writing? They must not be a lefty because that chalkboard would look like a watercolor painting if they were... 

These questions may never be answered. 



Some questions that we can answer, however, are about the safety of our pets during a solar eclipse. 

There are many resources for a safe human viewing experience of the solar eclipse over the United States on August 21st, 2017. 


BUT WHAT ABOUT OUR PRECIOUS PETS?! 
WHAT ABOUT THE WILD ANIMALS?! 
DO THEY MAKE SPECIAL GLASSES FOR THEM?! (I should have cashed in on that idea...)

No. Why? Because according to NASA (and common sense), Fluffy will be fine.
Pets are not people. Wild animals are not people. They are not curious children who will ask you questions and want to do a week's worth of lesson plans revolving around the strange thing they saw in the sky on Monday (sorry, teacher here).

To put it simply, animals know better than to look at the sun. 

But don't trust me, trust NASA.










"It's no different than any other day - on a normal day, your pets don't try to look at the sun, and therefore don't damage their eyes, so on this day they're not gonna do it either"


"It's not a concern, letting them outside. ...All that's happened is we've blocked out the sun, it's not more dangerous. ...I'm not going to worry about my cat."

"We know that animals react different at different times of day and we know from anecdotal evidence from previous eclipses that you get animals interacting with that change in light and maybe the change in temperature too"

Angela Speck


So it comes down to a battle between NASA and an anonymous store chalkboard. 

I'm going to trust the scientists. 

Is there a chance they could look and damage their eyes? There is a chance of anything in this crazy world. Should you worry? No, probably not. 

This is another reminder not to trust everything we see on the internet, no matter how cute the font colors are. 


What we really need to be concerned about during a solar eclipse are not the animals, but the PLANTS.


Picture from IMDB- Little Shop of Horrors (1986)