Animal rain

English cartoon of the centuryXIXwhere dogs and cats rain.

The rain of animals is an extraordinary meteorological phenomenon that consists of numerous animals falling from the sky, often of a single species. This atypical precipitation may or may not be accompanied by regular rain. The phenomenon has occurred in many regions throughout history. Testimonies of it have been recorded in various times and countries, which has given rise to many legends and controversies.

Most often, these "rains" are made up of fish or frogs, although there are stories that mention some species of birds. Sometimes the rain is so violent that the animals end up destroyed on the ground. Sometimes animals survive the blow, particularly fish, which suggests that the interval between taking off and returning to the ground is relatively short. Some testimonies describe rains of frogs, where the animals are intact after their fall. Sometimes the animals fall completely frozen, or are trapped inside blocks of ice; thus demonstrating that before falling, its height was very high, where the ambient temperature was below 0 °C.

Testimonials and legends

Texts and legends up to the Middle Ages

Recorded by O. Magnus, 1555, representing a fish shower.

Ancient literature abounds in testimonies of rain from animals, or rain from various objects, some of them organic.

They could go back to Ancient Egypt, if the Egyptian papyrus by Alberto Tulli (whose very existence is controversial) is validated and which is said to have recorded strange phenomena along with the appearance of what ufological literature interprets as a UFO. In a more particular way, the fall of fish and birds from the sky is also recorded. In the Bible it is told how Joshua and his army were helped by a rain of stones that fell on the Amorite army. The Bible evokes other celestial interventions of this type, such as the appearance of frogs, in one of the ten plagues of Egypt (Exodus 8, 5, 6). In the fourth century B.C. In the 1st century BC, the Greek author Athenaeus mentions a three-day rain of fish in the Chaeronea region of the Peloponnese. In the 1st century, the writer and naturalist Pliny the Elder described the rain of pieces of meat, blood and other animal parts like wool. Finally, in the Middle Ages, the frequency of the phenomenon in certain regions led people to believe that fish were born as adults in the skies, and immediately fell into the sea.

Evidence from modern times

Fish rain in Singapore, as described by local inhabitants.

Thanks to the written press, in modern times many testimonies have been generated, witnessed by a greater number of people, which increases their reliability. Some examples are listed below:

• In 1578, large yellow mice fell over the Norwegian city of Bergen.
• According to one John Collinges, a rain of sapos hit the English village of Acle, in Norfolk. The tavern of the place withdrew them for hundreds.
• On July 11, 1836, a professor at Cahors sent a letter to the French Academy of Sciences, saying:

This cloud stumbled over the road, about sixty coughs from where we were. Two gentlemen who came from Tolosa, our destiny, and who were exposed to the storm, were forced to use their coats; but the storm surprised them and frightened them, because they were victims of a rain of sapos! They accelerated their march and rushed; when they found the diligence they told us what had just happened to them. I saw then that when they shook their coats in front of us, little sapos fell.

fragment of the letter of M. Pontus, professor of Cahors, addressed to M. Arago.

• On 16 February 1861, the city of Singapore suffered a tremor of land, followed by three days of abundant rain. After the end of the rain, the inhabitants of Singapore saw that there were thousands of fish in the ponds. Some of them claimed to have seen them fall from heaven, although others were more reserved in giving their testimony. When the waters retreated, other fish were found in the puddles that had dried up, notably in places that had not been flooded.
• The magazine Scientific American records the report of a snake chubasco that reached about 45 cm) in Memphis on January 15, 1877. In the United States, more than fifteen reports of animal rains were recorded, only in the nineteenth century.
• On September 25, 1872 a large number of quails fell with the aquacerer on San Fernando (Cádiz); they served as "roof" for the troops of the army of land and the Navy of that day.
• In June 1880 a shower of codornics was debated on Valencia.
• On September 7, 1953, thousands of frogs fell from the sky over Leicester, Massachusetts, USA.
• In 1968, the Brazilian newspapers recorded a rain of flesh and blood on a relatively large area.
• Dead canaries fell in the city of St. Mary’s City, Maryland, United States, in January 1969. According to the newspaper Washington Post on January 26 of that year, the flight of the canaries suddenly interrupted, as if there had been an explosion, which no one saw or heard.
• In 1978, crabs rained in New South Wales in Australia.
• In 2002, fish rained in Greece. The newspaper Le Monde wrote:

Athens is not always beautiful, and less are the mountains to the north of Greece. But storms sometimes taste good to help smile and dream. On Tuesday, hundreds of small fish have rained in the village of Korona, in the high mountains

Pierre GEORGES. «Poissons volent» article in Le Monde13 December 2002

• In 2007, small spiders rained in Salta, Argentina.
• In 2007, small frogs rained in El Rebolledo (Alicante, Spain).
• On 1 August 2008, in Chocó, Colombia, it rained blood, but this fact is attributed to several causes, including animal rain.
• In 2012 shrimp rained in southern Sri Lanka
• Every year, there is a rain of fish in the city of Yoro, of the homonymous department in Honduras. In 2020, the History Channel channel issued a report on the phenomenon in northern Honduras.

Note: This list is by no means intended to be exhaustive. It simply exemplifies some of the most significant events related to this phenomenon.

Explanations of the phenomenon

Scientific explanation

A tornado can be responsible for capturing the animals and dropping them away from their place of origin.

Contrary to most of his contemporaries, the French physicist André-Marie Ampère considered the evidence of animal rains to be true. Ampère tried to explain the toad rains with a hypothesis that was later accepted and refined by scientists. Before the Society of Natural Sciences, Ampère stated that at certain times toads and frogs roam the fields in great numbers, and that the action of violent winds can capture them and displace them great distances.

More recently, a scientific explanation for the phenomenon has appeared, involving waterspouts. Indeed, the winds that swirl under the meteor are capable of capturing objects and animals, thanks to a combination of the depression in the spout, and the force exerted by the winds directed towards it.

Consequently, these waterspouts, or even tornadoes, will transport the animals to relatively great heights, also traveling great distances. The winds are capable of picking up the animals present in a relatively large area, and they drop them, en masse and in a concentrated manner, on localized points. More specifically, some tornadoes and waterspouts could completely dry up a pond, in order to drop the water and the fauna contained in it further away, in the form of "rain of animals".

This hypothesis appears reaffirmed by the nature of the animals of these rains: small and light, generally arising from the aquatic environment, such as frogs and fish. Also confirming is the fact that the rain of animals is often preceded by a storm. However, there are some details that could not be explained. For example, the fact that animals are sometimes still alive after the fall, and some of them in perfect condition. Another aspect is that normally each rain of animals manifests itself with only one species at a time, almost never mixing them or including algae or other plants. As William R. Corliss notes:

...the transport mechanism, whatever its nature, prefers to select a single species of fish or frog, or that animal that is in the menu of the day

Picture Doppler of a Texas weather radar showing the collision of a storm with a group of bats in flight. The red color indicates that animals are heading toward the cloud.

This apparent anomaly could be explained in the case of birds, if the waterspout passes through a particular flock that is in full flight, especially in times of migration. The image on the right shows a specific example where a group of bats is the victim of a storm. The image was captured by National Weather Service weather radar in Del Rio, Texas, and illustrates how the phenomenon can be predicted in some cases. In the image, the bats are in the red zone, which corresponds to the winds that move away from the radar (the radar is the white dot in the lower right corner), and enter the mesocyclone associated with a tornado (in green color). These types of events occur frequently with birds inevitably.

In some cases, different causes have been alleged for some alleged fish showers. For example, in the case of the fish shower in Singapore in 1861, the French naturalist Francis de Laporte de Castelnau explains that the shower occurred during a catfish migration, and that these animals are capable of crawling on land, to go from one puddle to another; such as eels, which can travel several kilometers in wet meadows, or pike that go to breed in flooded fields. In addition, he explains that the fact that he saw the fish on the ground immediately after the rain is nothing more than a coincidence, since normally these animals move on the ground wet with dew, or after a downpour or flood.

Old Explanations

Science has long discounted many of the explanations offered to it; considering them exaggerated, unreliable or unverifiable. In 1859, an eyewitness to a rain of fish in the town of Mountain Ash, in Wales, sent a specimen to the London Zoo. J. E. Gray, director of the British Museum, stated that "in light of the facts, it is most likely a hoax: one of Mr. Nixon's employees has emptied a bucket full of fish on him, and the latter he thought they were falling from the sky."

Logically, the animal rains were without a scientific explanation for a long time, while hypotheses were developed that ranged from logical attempts to explain the phenomenon to the absurd. In the fourth century B.C. C., the Greek philosopher Theophrastus denied the existence of rains of toads, simply explaining that toads do not fall during the rain, but that the latter makes them come out of the earth. In the sixteenth century, Reginald Scot ventured to give a hypothesis. According to him, “it is true that some creatures are generated spontaneously, and do not need parents. For example [...] these frogs come from nowhere. They were carried away by the rain. These creatures are born from downpours..." In the 19th century, evaporation of water was thought to carry frog eggs up into the clouds, where they hatched and fell to earth in a shower.

Alternative explanations

UFOs

Among the non-scientific explanations of the phenomenon, there are paranormal interpretations that allege interventions by extraterrestrial beings. Indeed, there is no lack of authors who describe these visitors collecting large quantities of animals as ballast, to later drop them before leaving our planet. The rains of blood and meat would be linked to a selection made by the visitors, to lighten their stores.

Gift or punishment from the gods

Supernatural explanations also persist, which may be religious in nature. Depending on the type of object or animal that falls to the ground, the phenomenon is perceived either as a punishment, as in the case of the stones that fell on the Amorite army in the Old Testament; or as a providential sign of divine goodness, when it comes to edible animals.

Teleportation

Equally and in the same speculative line, the existence of anomalies in space-time that animals would bring from other dimensions is suggested. These explanations sometimes use teleportation to explain why animals are where they shouldn't be. Journalist Charles Hoy Fort has developed these ideas. According to Fort, in the past there was a force capable of transporting objects instantly, which no longer manifests itself except in disorderly actions, such as showers of fish. Another suggestion by Fort is based on the supposed existence of an "upper Sargasso Sea", a kind of celestial reservoir that sucks in and spits out terrestrial objects.

The rain of animals in culture

"It's raining cats and dogs"

This English expression, which literally means 'it rains cats and dogs', and is equivalent to the Spanish 'it rains heavily', is perhaps the best-known reference to the phenomenon, which we find in everyday language. This expression is first found written in the work A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation, by Jonathan Swift, from 1731. However, the origin of the expression is uncertain. One speculation is that it is a distortion of the archaic French catadoupe, which means 'shower', or 'waterfall'. Other speculation has it that in the Middle Ages, heavy rains washed the carcasses of cats and dogs off the roofs, causing them to fall into the streets.

There are expressions in other languages that refer to animal rains in the same way, but in no case is there evidence that these expressions are based on reality. In German, for example, one can say that "it is raining [dog] puppies" (Es regnet junge Hunde); and in Polish that "it rains frogs" (Leje zabami).

Cinema and literature

The most complete documentation on the rains of animals is due to the American journalist Charles Hoy Fort, who dedicated his life to the unexplained phenomena. The New York Public Library preserves more than sixty thousand cards written by Fort, a large part of which refers to cases of animal rain. The Fortean Society, created in his honor, continues the search for strange and unexplained phenomena.

Paul Thomas Anderson, American film director and supporter of Fort, based some of the sequences in his film Magnolia on the events reported by Fort; including a rain of frogs. A shower of fish is witnessed in Le Dernier Combat, the first feature film by French director Luc Besson, as well as in the films The Avengers, by Jeremiah Chechik, an adaptation of the series television series and Joshua Goldin's Wonderful World. More recently, the television series Fargo, based on the film of the same name, includes a sequence in which a shower of fish takes place in the North American city of Duluth (Minnesota).

In the book Sido, the writer Colette describes a shower of lukewarm frogs:

The last cloud, and I was taking a seating bath, Antoine soaked and the layer full of water, of a hot water, at 18 or 20 degrees. And when Antoine turned the cape, what do we find? Minuscule, live frogs, at least thirty brought by the air, by a whim of the south, by a hot trom, one of those tornadoes whose base collects and raises a hundred leagues a mixture of sand, grain, insects...

In Captain Pánfilo, by the writer Alexandre Dumas, a rain of toads that appears in the newspapers causes a delirium in the house of one of the characters:

...remembered to have read, a few days before, signed by Valenciennes, that this city had been the theater of a singular phenomenon: a rain of sapos had fallen accompanied by thunders and lightnings, in such quantity that the streets of the city and the roofs of the houses had been covered. Immediately afterwards, the sky, which two hours before had a grey ash colour, was now indigo blue. The subscriber Constitutionnel He looked into the air, and seeing the black sky as ink and Tom in his garden, unable to realize how he had entered, he began to believe that a phenomenon similar to that of Valenciennes was about to be repeated, with the only difference that instead of being rain of sapos, they would rain bears. One was no more dangerous than the other; the hail was bigger and dangerous

Alejandro DUMAS: Captain PánfiloChapter VIII

In 2002, in his novel Kafka on the shore, the Japanese Haruki Murakami uses the phenomenon of the rain of fish within a fictional context, mixing Bildungsroman with the supernatural.

Manga and anime

In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean, Weather Report uses his ability to manipulate the weather to bring dozens of poison dart frogs to the Green Dolphin's Street prison and rain them down on the courtyard where Jolyne Cujoh and Whitesnake were.