Folks across central New York had their eyes on the sky hoping to catch glimpses of Monday's total solar eclipse. At the Syracuse Rosamond Gifford Zoo, researchers were also monitoring animal behavior shifts.
Ted Fox, executive director of the Zoo, said volunteers were monitoring all of the animals to see if they changed their behavior or started doing any nighttime routines. The research will be used in a study at North Carolina State University.
"Many of the animals here in their natural state and here at the zoo go by the day length and go by the time of day and how dark it is and if there's a storm coming," Fox said. "So there's always some low levels of change in their behavior. And today is a special day because there's so many people that are excited about it."
Father and son Ernie and Max Wechsler traveled five hours from Westchester to see the eclipse in totality. Max, 11, hopes to be an astrophysicist one day. He and his dad watched the eclipse from the elephant pavilion.
"It's kind of on and off that you can actually see it because of the clouds, but when you can see it it kind of looks like someone took a very round and precise bite out of the sun," Max Wechsler said.
"We would have wanted to see it the whole time but any time you can see it it's astounding," Ernie Wechsler added.
For a while, it looked as though Syracuse might not have gotten any views of totality, but then at the right moment, the clouds opened up just enough to see the glowing halo of the sun behind the moon during totality.
At the elephant pavilion, twins Yaad and Tukada, who had been grazing throughout the lawn, flocked toward the rest of the herd as they looked to go inside thinking it was dinner time. Migratory birds flew out of the courtyard pond and headed home. And the temperature dropped as everyone looked up at the sky together.
