How do animals survive a hurricane?

Can they tell its coming?

This meme was making the rounds of the internet over the past couple weeks and does a lot to explain why Helene was such a dangerous storm.

The 2024 hurricane season has proven to be a doozy, just as predicted. So far there have been 13 named storms, of which nine have become hurricanes. Warm ocean temperatures have created perfect conditions for massive hurricanes like Helene and Milton to wreak havoc, not just for humans but for animals too.

What happens to animals during a hurricane? Do they have senses that allow them to know it’s coming so they can escape? I wondered this in the days leading up to Helene, knowing the storm was brewing hundreds of miles away and was predicted to impact our area – could the fox near our mailbox sense that a storm was coming? What about the songbirds – did they have special insight as masters of the sky? And then there are the smaller mice and raccoons and rabbits not really built for migration – can they get out of the way of the torrential rains, the flash floods, the winds? Is a hurricane as devastating for animals as it is for humans?

How do animals survive a hurricane?

I did some research to look into how animals react to hurricanes and floods. Many animals that are mobile simple move away from a flood zone to higher ground. Animals like deer and foxes are able to quickly relocate, which is especially important since food sources are often scarce afterward in the flood zone. Animals that burrow underground, such as groundhogs, moles, and rabbits, may get trapped in their burrows and not survive. Beavers, who should be used to water, are surprisingly susceptible to getting trapped inside the dry room in their lodges when fast moving water tears apart their dams.

Burrowing owls win “cutest birds of the internet” – just try Googling them

Burrowing owls are particularly susceptible to flooding from hurricanes. These small owls live in the southern United States and throughout much of South America. They live underground in burrows they dig themselves with their beaks and feet or that they’ve “borrowed” from prairie dogs or tortoises. When food is readily available, they stock up like doomsday preppers – one cache found in 1997 held the bodies of 200 rodents! Of course, the owls can fly away from their burrows when they flood, but they’re unprotected while they wait for the waters to recede.

Sometimes birds do suffer during a hurricane. Oftentimes, they sense the low-pressure system coming and temporarily migrate to a better area. But with Hurricane Idalia in 2023, flamingos from the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico got swept up in the storm and ended up far from home – places like Wisconsin, Missouri, and Kansas. Some were able to orient themselves and fly back home, but others didn’t survive.

Even weirder -- birds can even get caught in the calmer air inside the eye of a hurricane.

This video shows the radar signature of a large flock of seagulls and other birds trapped in the eye of Hurricane Matthew several years ago. The same phenomenon happened with these past Hurricanes Helene and Milton – the winds of the eyewall are too strong for the birds (and insects!) to pierce through, so they simply ride out the storm and wait for it to eventually fall apart.

Zoos do everything they can to protect their animals during major storms, including herding flamingos into the bathrooms.

As you’d imagine, a flamingo would be a difficult animal to carry to safety, so to make their jobs easier, zookeepers periodically take the flamingos on walks throughout the year. When a storm looms, they simply follow the humans to… the loo.

Wild animals are often able to tell when a storm is coming because they can sense the low-pressure system as it approaches land. This is the warning system they need to escape or hunker down in place. For instance, manatees usually find a mangrove-lined channel to ride out the storm. But manatees are also notoriously curious, and this leads some of them to explore areas opened by storm surge. Some can become trapped as the waters recede, like these manatees trapped in a pond on a golf course in Florida.

Sharks can also sense oncoming hurricanes, possibly through their ears or the lateral lines along their bodies, both of which contain highly sensitive hairs. These are similar to the hairs in our ears, though sharks have much more sensitive hearing than humans in order to hear fish struggling in waters at a great distance.  

Many sharks will leave an area ahead of a hurricane and head for deeper waters. That’s because hurricanes, while not as disruptive below the surface as above, can still produce massive currents as deep as 300 feet and waves on the surface reaching 60 feet or more. That turmoil is not pleasant, though researchers have found that some larger sharks do stay within the hurricane zone, possibly to take advantage of the dead carcasses that remain once the storm has passed on.

Of course, even if animals do survive a hurricane, those in the storm zone lose their habitat and food sources after the flood waters recede, and in that respect are not that different than the stunned people wandering the flood zone the morning after. Add to that the toxicity of the receding waters that have broken open sewer pipes and collected all the nearby chemicals from homes and vehicles, and you have animals dying weeks after the storm is gone, like these 20 kangaroos that died from drinking contaminated water after flooding in Australia. Now, flesh-eating bacteria have been found in waters in Florida, endangering both animals and humans.

If you, like me, hate to see animals suffering, you might consider donating to the Humane Society, which has an Animal Rescue Team that flies in to stricken areas to provide food, shelter, and affection to affected domesticated animals. Also, the Animal Legal Defense Fund has listed sites local to N.C. and Florida that are in need of support after these latest hurricanes.

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Weird Nature:

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