Don’t leave us in the dark! Startled giraffes, zebras and ostriches at the Dallas Zoo panic during the solar eclipse… but not everyone is feeling the mania that has swept the country!

Startled giraffes, zebras and ostriches ran in circles as total darkness fell over the Dallas Zoo for the 2024 solar eclipse — but the elephants were unphased.

The zoo offered a special eclipse event and had staff stationed around the park to talk about how the animals reacted as visitors flocked to the path of totality that passed through Mexico and North America on Monday.

The total solar eclipse brought the country to a standstill as millions of people stopped working and studying to find a point where they could see the rare celestial phenomenon.

At the Dallas Zoo, keepers didn’t know what to expect, assuming that primates would be most sensitive to the eclipse and that birds might sense that it’s night and think it’s time to perch.

But it was the giraffes, zebras and ostriches that showed the strongest reactions, becoming increasingly fearful as the daytime sky darkened.

Christine Montgomery, Manager of Applied Behavior at the Dallas Zoo, told CW33, “This is the first solar eclipse we’ve had here at the Dallas Zoo, so we’re very excited to see what our animals will do.”

She said: ‘We don’t expect them to do anything so remarkable, but come with us to the zoo.

‘We are going to observe and see what happens, so you are going to learn with us.’

A crowd gathered at the zoo to watch the eclipse and at first all was calm.

But as the sky began to darken, the animals became more alert and some began to become frightened.

The ostriches gathered in a group in the center of their cage, and one laid an egg just before the sun completely covered it.

Birds returned to their perches to nest, thinking it was night, while penguins and flamingos huddled together.

As the zoo descended into complete darkness, the giraffes were the first to take flight, galloping through their enclosure.

The zebras were next, joining them and running around in circles and making little jumps.

And then the ostriches joined in, flapping and kicking their legs.

But not all animals were phased.

The elephants were completely stunned by the eclipse and were eating as if nothing special had happened.

And the western lowland gorillas just yawned and stretched as the sky darkened.

The watching audience was delighted with the displays, the cheering and the filming of the animals.

A 2020 study into how animals respond to the zoo said the rarity of a solar eclipse makes it a “new experience” for animals and thus can lead to “abnormal behavior.”

They found that of the seventeen species they observed, thirteen exhibited unusual behavior.

They found that some species exhibited anxious behavior, cowering or becoming silent.

Komodo dragons showed one of the most interesting changes in the study, going from lying almost completely still to frantically running around until the sun reappeared and then went still again.

Baboons, flamingos, gorillas, giraffes and Komodo dragons all showed worried behavior, while birds and elephants pretended it was night.

Thousands of packed cities line the ‘path of totality’ of the total solar eclipse, where the moon will completely block out the sun, starting in Mexico and passing through Texas to New England and ending in Canada.

At each location along the path, people saw a partial solar eclipse, followed by the total solar eclipse, and then another partial solar eclipse.