From wriggly worms to a fearsome predator, here are 10 animals that actually fell from
the sky!
10.
Worms
One species that seems to fall from the sky a lot is worms.
That’s right, pretty icky huh?
Around the world there have been many eyewitness accounts of worms plummeting to earth.
It’s occurred throughout history and the craziest thing is it has happened during calm
weather conditions as well as stormy ones.
These worms wind up everywhere.
In 1872 they rained down on Bucharest in Romania.
It was Christmas too… not so much a case of White Christmas as Wriggly Christmas.
Not a great omen even if it was just a natural occurrence.
In 1912 a ferry boat in Canton South Dakota was actually followed by a cloud which seemed
to spit worms!
Then in Texas 2015, drivers witnessed the bizarre sight of piles of worms all in a neat
line along a road.
The worms fall in huge numbers and have reportedly had to be scooped up in buckets!
No-one’s sure how they end up in the sky.
Tornados is one guess but they’ve also appeared during non-stormy weather.
What the heck is going on in the sky??
9.
Flying Foxes
In January of this year, the heatwave in Australia was so severe, it melted Tarmac.
Residents of Campbelltown in New South Wales started freaking out as flying foxes, also
known as fruit bats, started raining down.
Yes bats, falling down on your head.
These little guys have a 3.3ft (1m) wingspan and weigh around 2 lbs (1 kg).
The adults could cope with the temperatures, which reached 111.5 degrees Fahrenheit (44.2
Celsius) but sadly their babies are sensitive to anything over 86 deg F (30 C).
A wildlife charity was out with many volunteers trying to help the flying foxes by providing
fluids but in the end, hundreds fell from the trees.
What happens is that the heat literally boils their brain and stops their bodies from regulating
temperature.
Usually we find bats scary but this is a horror story of a different kind.
Temperatures keep getting hotter and hotter and many animals have been suffering because
of it.
It looks like it’s going to get worse for them.
Poor little guys!
And now for number 8, but first, can you guess what number 1 is going to be??
Let me know in the comments!!
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8.
Frogs
Frog rain sounds like a weird phenomenon but it isn’t all that strange.
There are various recorded cases of it happening and the idea of amphibians falling from the
sky is also in the public’s mind from Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie ‘Magnolia’.
Even though it sounds crazy, it actually happens!
It is a rare meteorological phenomenon that happens every 10 years or so.
The bible mentions frogs raining from the sky and even though it may have been a metaphor,
it literally just happened.
A recent case happened in Hungary when teeny tiny frogs came out of the clouds!
This happened across the country over a couple of days.
That’s a lot of frogs, right?
It’s believed the rain is caused by extreme weather conditions like wind which blow the
frogs out of their habitat.
However some have said that waterspouts, or tornados that lift things out of the water,
are probably responsible.
Britain also seems to be susceptible in recent years and no one is really sure why it is
happening more often.
The waterspout sucks up everything from frogs to golf balls and moves everything to the
vortex which it then sucks up into the storm clouds.
Sometimes hundred and even thousands of frogs will rain down.
Not quite sharknado, but hey...
7.
Spiders
People in Brazil got a shock in 2013 when the sky seemed to fill up with spiders!
If you’re an arachnophobe you might want to look away now!
This happened in the town of Santo Antonio Da Platina, west of Sao Paulo.
While in the Northeast there are tons of blizzards, in Brazil, its raining spiders!
Which do you prefer??
A photographer was shooting an engagement party when it started raining down spiders,
can you imagine?
Apparently this is not as strange of an occurrence as you might think!!
They’re social spiders who live in huge colonies and are capable of constructing immense
webs.
Some have been known to spin them up to a height of 65ft (19.8 m)!!
These spiders will use their webs as balloons to fly over the skies of Brazil.
When strong winds hit the colony, it will carry them through the air for miles and they
can travel all over the place, from forests to parks.
So if you’re planning a trip over there anytime soon be sure to pack your umbrella.
And your spider repellent…!
Australia has also experienced some spider rain recently!
Southern Australia experienced millions of spiders dropping from the sky.
These are tiny spiders that also use their webs to fly and it often looks like it’s
snowing!!
You’ll be happy to know that ballooning spiders pose no danger to people.
6.
Fish
Something fishy was going on in Australia and by fishy, that’s what I mean.
In the town of Lajamanu on the edge of the Tanami Desert in the Northern Territory locals
had a close encounter of the scaly kind.
In 2010 hundreds of fish rained down on them in an incident which left them baffled.
The fish were described as small and white and it’s presumed they were carried in an
updraft of some kind.
They may have reached a height of around 60 or 70,000 ft (18288 - 21336 m) before plunging
onto the town below.
That was pretty weird but an even weirder thing is this wasn’t the first time!
In 2004 Lajamanu experienced tons of raining fish.
What is it about that spot that makes it a prime spot for fish rain?
Well we hear the schools are pretty good there.
Did you see what I did there...Because you can get a school of fish and… eh, forget
it.
5.
Blackbirds
New Year’s Eve wasn’t such a happy time for people in the town of Beebe in Arkansas.
They were surprised by the appearance of 4-5,000 red-winged blackbirds which fell to the ground
out of nowhere, turning the place into an avian graveyard.
After some investigation it was concluded that the birds had all suffered blunt force
trauma!
While that sounds strange, if you look at the facts it makes sense.
First, a few thousand birds is a hell of a lot of birds but they came from a roost of
1.6 million.
What happened was the roost got spooked and took to the air, possibly due to all of the
fireworks going off in celebration of the new year.
Blunt force trauma would’ve been caused by some of the birds colliding with things
like trees or power lines.
It’s as simple and as tragic as that, though some have argued it’s all a big conspiracy
and tried to relate it to other mass sightings of fallen birds around the world.
Many took it as a sign of the coming apocalypse.
Not a good omen.
4.
Tadpoles
In 2009 Japan found it was raining tadpoles, as well as fish and frogs.
We’ve had both already already so let’s focus on tadpoles.
Wow, tadpoles!
That really is a crazy thing to fall from the sky, huh?
Maybe some of them got so scared they aged prematurely and became frogs before they hit
the ground!
That makes sense right?
In fact no-one knows why this happened, only that the first sightings of tadpoles occurred
in Ishikawa prefecture.
A prefecture is basically a place run by a prefect, who’s like a governor.
It’s on the coast of the Sea of Japan and is part of the island of Honshu.
A man described hearing a strange sound in the parking lot and said that when he came
out, the windshields were covered in tadpoles!!
The phenomenon happened countrywide from the southwest to the northeast.
One theory goes that the tadpoles were picked up by one of those waterspouts that I mentioned
earlier.
Another says they were dropped by birds who were eating them and then spat them out, which
sounds less convincing… unless they were the most accident-prone birds in history!
3.
Squid
You could call this entry a case of poetic justice!
In 1997 a Korean fisherman called Kim Ho was looking for a good catch near the Falkland
Islands.
You may know the islands from the infamous Falklands Conflict.
Well it seems the violence hadn’t quite ended yet, as Kim Ho discovered to his cost.
He was hit on the head by something falling from the sky.
It was… wait for it… a frozen squid!
It really happened!
A fisherman got taken out by a fish, albeit a frozen, dead one.
Sounds funny but we should tell you he was out cold, pardon the expression, for 2 days.
There’s a theory the squid was actually being wielded by one of his crewmates but
we don’t know about that.
You’d have to swing a frozen squid with some force to knock someone into unconsciousness.
So, as far as we know, a frozen squid fell out of the sky.
2.
Snakes
I’ve mentioned all kinds of creepy-crawlies so far in this video so you know it was only
a matter of time before I started talking about snakes!
This is a historical case which dates back to 1877 in South Memphis.
Thousands of black snakes were reported to have dropped during a rainstorm.
Some were over a foot (0.3 m) long and they were all tangled up in one big snakey mess.
I guess it’s the modern equivalent of getting all the cables stuck together on your TV.
That can be a nightmare, but nothing compared to this!
Like with some of the other cases the reason the snakes appeared is a mystery.
The snakes covered 2 blocks and it’s thought that either they were blown there by a hurricane
or there was another reason altogether for their unannounced visit.
The streets had recently been built and some reckoned the construction crews had disturbed
the reptiles and they’d slithered out for a looksee.
I’m not sure which is worse to be honest… snakes falling from the sky or coming up out
of the ground.
1.
Alligators
In general, I’ve been referring to groups of animals that have been picked up by the
weather and dumped miles from their home.
Some of them, like the spiders, do this by choice.
But this guy was definitely misplaced by accident.
Residents of Charleston in South Carolina got a big surprise in 1843 when they spotted
a new and unexpected addition to their community… an alligator!
A massive thunderstorm had been powerful enough to lift the little fella off his feet and
dump him on a street corner.
The alligator was only 2 feet long (0.6 m) and pretty battered from his journey but still,
it must have looked pretty freaky.
It could have been worse of course.
Thankfully this predator was on his lonesome when the storm blew up.
Imagine if there’d been a nearby alligator convention going on.
Charleston would have been full of alligators.
You know that sounds like the cue for a horror movie.
Get the ‘Sharknado’ people on the phone!
Thanks for watching!
Have you seen any animals falling from the sky?
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