Dallas Texas I do want to bring in Carrie striber the VP of marketing and Communications at the Dallas Zoo to talk a little bit more about what she saw there and how the animals responded thank you so much Carrie for taking the time to be here with us today yeah absolutely all right so first off just kind of break down your personal experience there as we did see totality at the Dallas Zoo it was amazing um the zoo was filled which was great to see um a lot of uh we know that we had um well over
5,000 people in the zoo today um from 46 different states and 16 different countries uh came to join us here um and had just some amazing moments um as we moved into and and those four minutes of totality um there were sort of ooze and aw and screams um as we moved into darkness and then a lot of folks turned their attention to the animals as well um we saw animal doing um probably actually a little more reactive than we they thought we thought they were going to be um which was great um but ev
erybody uh you know I think sort of did what we expected them to do um most of the animals uh huddled together uh a lot of the the um uh mammals and uh elephants and uh ostriches and giraffes um kind of came together or moved as if they were going uh to their behind the scenes areas during that totality makes sense it's time for bed um in terms of what the lighting looks like um Birds uh roosted and went quiet um in a lot of places and then we did hear some birds um and some of the primates were
calling to one another um because they had kind of lost sight uh at a at a strange time and quickly so um I think it was a uh not out of the realm of expected but it was an amazing phenomenon to experience and kind of going in reverse a little bit how do you prepare for all of this because you probably have to think we don't necessarily know how the animals there at the zoo are going to react so how do you go about making sure that the correct I guess preparations are underway yeah so um we're
very fortunate in the zoo community that um there's a lot of collaboration among zoos so we are aware of what other zoos have experienced um whether those were partial or or total eclipses in some cases um and so the the teams were ready um again we didn't expect a lot of extreme Behavior so we didn't make a lot of changes to Habitat um or anything that we would be doing we kept a very normal schedules today what we did do was have staff out not only observing the the eclipse themselves to enjoy
it um but also doing observations of animals so we wanted to keep a close eye on how the animals were reacting um and so that's a little bit different while we would normally have staff out and observing uh there were a lot more eyes on them today on the animals today and then we also asked guests um to participate as well we handed out uh some research or kind of observation sheets to guest that are a simpler version of what our staff would typically look for um they're called um uh the observ
ation sheets that they use and so um we asked them to describe what animal they were watching what the uh description of the activity they saw even draw a picture if they wanted to especially for the younger ones and then tell us what stage of the eclipse that that occurred in and we're going to collect those it's more for keeping the guessing engaged and giving them something to do it's not a formal research um assignment but great for us to kind of see and compare that to what our our team saw
as well and kind of going uh more talking about the animals in general how exactly can uh you learn from the experience because it's not like a solar eclipse especially a total solar eclipse is going to happen that often but you are able to learn from this and just kind of how the animals react and and study that right yeah so we have uh the the zoologists that work with our animals every day know them very well and know their personalities very well we also have a team that focuses on animal b
ehavior and what they focus on is working with the zoologists in those instances where we need to understand how animals are going to react to an environment change or to a change in something else that may be going on around them um and all of the research and all of the observations that we can make throughout any different uh situation that we observe uh goes into helping understand better how to ensure that the animals uh do respond well that we can uh that we know what to look for um when t
here may be a reaction that we need to be aware of um and so it's all a part of learning and then what's great again about the zoo Community is we do share that um across Zoo so anything that we can take away from observing the animals again in this sort of unique and very different and once in a lifetime opportunity um it still does tell you about how different animals May react act even within the same herd a giraffe May react very differently um than several of its its herd mates which we saw
today as well so um you know anything we can do that gives us further insight into how these animals move and react and uh and respond to things is all is all good in our book today a success I would say just based on what you were expecting and what you did witness yeah absolutely I I think the response from guests was amazing um and uh and what we were able to kind of uh feel together um in those moments you certainly saw the reactions from guest uh as the as totality set in um and then anima
ls you know kind of as we expected but it was also really great to see some of that validated because we just didn't know we haven't had this happen in in well over a hundred years um so none of us were around the last time and uh and so it was going to be a learning experience either way but uh a great day at the zoo and the weather cooperated we're so thankful the clouds clear cleared out for us uh and we had a really great uh a great afternoon here and that's what I was going to ask as well b
ecause I know there were concerns about weather pretty much up until the very last moment were you worried at all that we were going to have some Stormy Weather some cloudy weather and you wouldn't get that perfect view yeah so we were ready um you know we that's why we we had added some additional activities and we had some NASA the NASA live stream available on TVs just in case U because we saw what the forecast was uh but for Ely this morning the clouds were there but you could still you coul
d tell they were high clouds and they burned off um and it's turned into a lovely partly cloudy afternoon here so we had we had some great moments there were a couple of clouds that came over right before totality that made us a little bit nervous but it cleared off uh clouds passed and and we had a great great view of uh of totality all right Carrie thank you so much for taking the time to join us and talk a little bit more about the eclipse we're actually looking at a live image out of Burling
ton Vermont off to the left side of your screen where you can see the partial eclipse now over it has moved out it was amazing though for several hours that folks got to see it anything else that you want to add about any of this before I let you go no I think it's just we so appreciate um you know the opportunity we had and especially from Dallas being the largest city uh one of the largest cities in totality we loved being able to host people from what we saw around the world uh and and give t
hem an opportunity to see this this amazing event all right thank you again for taking the time to be here with us we appreciate it thank you
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