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Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday March 28th, 2024 and this is a special episode of

the excerpt. On April 8th, 8th, tens of millions of people across the North American continent

will be able to step outside their doors and witness a rare total solar eclipse.

That's when the moon passes between part of the Earth and the Sun

temporarily blocking its light. It's our last chance to see one for 20 years in America. Charting a path through 13 states from

Texas to Maine and also passing parts of Mexico and Canada, sky watchers will show up in droves,

snarling traffic to dawn eclipse glasses and look up as the sun turns black.

National correspondent Elizabeth Weiss has been covering this story for USA Today, detailing what makes the celestial event so incredibly

special.

Thanks for joining us, Beth.

I'm always glad to be here.

When it suddenly becomes dark in the middle of the day, animals like insects and birds fall silent and the nocturnal ones start to stir.

You wrote about scientists who will be observing animals at zoos in the path of totality.

What kinds of things have they seen animals do in the past?

It is wild, and in fact the guy,

the scientist who did this, who's a professor of an animal anatomy, just kind of an

a lark, thought he'd go to a zoo, and he didn't think he was going to see anything.

This was back in 2017, and 75% of the animals behaved really differently.

I mean, the bears immediately headed back into their cages because they thought it was dinner time.

The flamingos all gathered in a circle around their chicks and their eggs to protect them because they didn't know it was gording on.

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