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Animal Falls: Falls Or Rains Of Animals (Frogs, Fish, Etc.)

Seafood Rain in Qingdao - with some amazing pictures!

It's raining octopus! Sea creatures fall from the sky

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ar-starfish-octopus-flying-streets-China.html
 
The Independent news item on this story:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ain-on-land-china-storm-qingdao-a8403616.html

... claims the octopus photo is a fake, and there's still debate whether all the photos posted over the last few days represent falls of marine organisms sucked out of the ocean by the storm ...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ain-on-land-china-storm-qingdao-a8403616.html

The storm also led to some more humorous images being passed around online, including a photograph supposedly of an octopus on a car windscreen, which has since been revealed as fake.

While the shower of sea creatures may have been caused by the storm sucking animals out of the ocean and dropping them onto the street, there are other theories.

Some have speculated that the images may have been the result of seafood being blown from stalls at a nearby market into the road.
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This Science Alert article:

https://www.sciencealert.com/seafood-octopus-starfish-rain-animals-china-qingdao-real-or-fake

... doesn't claim all the photos are faked, but they claim the octopus photo definitely is. To support this claim, they provide a link to a Dreamstime (stock image vendor) octopus silhouette that seems to match the alleged windscreen octopus exactly ...

https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-illustration-silhouette-octopus-wildlife-series-image92275240

Here's the Dreamstime image, scaled down and rotated to the same orientation as the octopus photo ...

silhouette-octopus-wildlife-series-92275240.jpg

(Image offered by Dreamstime for previewing)
​
 
Yeah, I know - it was my favorite, too. I had hoped it was real, because it would have been the most dramatic 'sea life fall' photo I'd ever seen.
 
tastyintestines said:
Try reading the article.
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I did.
You mean that bit '...this mode of transport is less stressful for the fish compared to previous methods and that 95% of them survive the journey...'?
Yes, 95% of them survive the journey to the lake. How many survive being dropped from the plane into the lake?
 
I've seen a real fish fall!

At least, I saw several small (dead) fish scattered inland, after the typhoon, about 10-15 feet from the sea.

Apologies for the quality of my phone camera.

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Min Bannister said:
Today's Times has an article about a fishfall in Sunderland 100 years ago to this day. It is paywalled but I'll summarise. It was during a rainstorm in some allotments in Hendon and hundreds of sandeels rained down in a 10 minute burst. The fall encompassed the allotments and three adjoining roads.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/a-shower-of-sand-eels-79kmllqdr
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Oh, what a shame the drop didn't include a few buckets of blood, and a few skeletons, as it would have saved them on fertiliser!
 
A fish fall has been reported, and its aftermath photographed, in Texarkana (Texas / Arkansas) - far from the seacoast.
Unusual phenomenon causes fish to rain from sky in Texas town

Officials in Texas town said residents weren't just imagining it when it seemed to be "raining fish" during a storm.

The city of Texarkana said in a Facebook post that it was indeed "raining fish" during Wednesday's rainstorms. ...

Multiple residents took to social media to share photos of the fish that fell from the sky.

"Animal rain is a phenomenon that occurs when small water animals like frogs, crabs, and small fish are swept up in waterspouts or drafts that occur on the surface of the earth. They are then rained down at the same time as the rain," the city's Facebook post said.
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SOURCE (With News Report Video): https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2021/12/30/raining-fish-Texarkana-Texas/9101640895785/

 
EnolaGaia said:
A fish fall has been reported, and its aftermath photographed, in Texarkana (Texas / Arkansas) - far from the seacoast.

SOURCE (With News Report Video): https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2021/12/30/raining-fish-Texarkana-Texas/9101640895785/

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I just got this news from Paul Cropper who talked to some of the witnesses. It's a very well documented report. The fish CLEARLY fell. They were seen falling in several locations. And they were found in truck beds. Really cool story. No good explanation for this. (The "waterspout" idea is hardly satisfactory).

https://www.arklatexhomepage.com/news/local-news/fish-rain-from-sky-in-texarkana/
 
These sorts of events have always fascinated me.

People get worked up because they don't understand why the fish or amphibians fall in size-sorted groups or follow ballistic trajectories, but that's really not too different from the behavior of hydrometeors like hail. What stumps us meteorologists is how such things get up into the air in the first place!

Severe tornadoes can do some crazy things, but they aren't always reported nor plausible in every fish-fall scenario. Additional complicating factors are that a vortex strong enough to empty a pond would be likely to puree any soft-bodied creatures, and that said aquatic creatures surely would dive down and away from weaker disturbances at the air/water interface.
 
This Texarkana Gazette article is the most detailed account I've found so far.
Storm rains bushels of fish on Texarkana

by Lori Dunn | December 29, 2021 at 5:35 p.m. | Updated December 29, 2021 at 9:06 p.m.

At least four locations in town reported a free-fall of fish either during or in the aftermath of two storms that blew through here Wednesday afternoon.

Among the places that pelted by fish were Discount Wheel & Tire and Tiger Stadium, both on Summerhill Road on the Texas side of town. ...

Arkansas-side resident Melissa Curry was the first to call the Gazette to report the strange occurrence. She and her husband were leaving their home Wednesday afternoon when they discovered as many as two dozen small fish scattered around the back yard and side yard of their Victorian home.

“There were every bit of 20 fish out here.,” Curry said. “we were flabbergasted. “

Tim Brigham, manager of Discount Wheel and Tire at 3223 Summerhill Road, said he saw some fish falling during a thunderstorm that popped up Wednesday afternoon.

“It was hailing and looked like there was about to be a tornado,” he said. “And there were fish falling.”

Brigham estimated there were between 25 and 30 fish and some were several inches long. There were at least as many on a lot to the north of his property. ...

After the storm, cleared, around dusk, Brigham had an employee pick those in front of his building up and pile them behind the business so customers wouldn’t accidentally step on them in his parking lot.

A reporter witnessed at least 15 to 20 shiny dead fish in the pile, some 6 to 7 inches long and with a girth of a couple inches or more. When he arrived and opened his car door, maybe an hour after the fact, the air smelled like fish, like the mild scent that hangs outside a fish market or at a fishing dock along a lake.

Simply put, the air smelled fishy.

All of the fish had their heads busted open, Brigham said.

Brigham believes the fish, which he called shad, must have been dropped from from pretty high up.

“They were bouncing off the concrete,” he said.

Across the street at McClarty Ford, 3232 Summerhill, an employee told a reporter that the silver fish were all over the parking lot and he actually saw some of them falling from the sky during the storm.

South down Summerhill Road about 1.5 miles from these two businesses, a fish fell on Tiger Stadium at Grim Park, where the Texas High Boys Soccer Team was practicing. Players were disbursed around 4 p.m. because rain was falling and a storm was approaching. Near the sidelines, a player kicked up a fish he found lying there,” said Jackson Haltom, a team member.

“We weren’t looking for fish,” he said, “we were leaving, so there are probably more out there.”

While three of the fall zones were on Summerhill Road, the first report of flying fish — or maybe crashing fish would be more accurate — came from a residential area in the 1800 block of Country Avenue, 2.2 miles to the east on the Arkansas side of town. The drop there seems to have happened earlier in the afternoon.

When this reporter arrived at the address, a dozen or more of the fish were on the ground. Curry said some of them had already been removed because she was afraid her grandchildren would try to eat them.

Still, this reporter saw at least 12 or 15 at the site. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.texarkanagazette.com/news/2021/dec/29/fish-appear-in-several-places-in-texarkana-after/
 
Here are some reported facts that stood out for me in the newspaper account ....

There were two substantial storms that passed over or through Texarkana on the afternoon of the 29th.

The fish fall at one of the four drop sites - the farthest from the others, located on the Arkansas side of town - is mentioned as possibly having occurred before the other three.

The storm conditions were strong enough to have included hail - indicative of storm-related processes active at a relatively great height.

One witness claimed the fish he saw all "had their heads busted open." This same witness claimed, "(It) looked like there was about to be a tornado."
 
Sharon Hill said:
I just got this news from Paul Cropper who talked to some of the witnesses. It's a very well documented report. The fish CLEARLY fell. They were seen falling in several locations. And they were found in truck beds. Really cool story. No good explanation for this. (The "waterspout" idea is hardly satisfactory).

https://www.arklatexhomepage.com/news/local-news/fish-rain-from-sky-in-texarkana/
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Link unavailable in UK.

Do we know whether the fish were fresh water or marine? Looking at a map Texarkana seems to be about 400k from the sea.
 
There ARE photos of the fish on the rooftops! I've never seen this kind of documentation before.
Paul Cropper is in contact with researchers in the area to do more analysis.

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hunck said:
Link unavailable in UK.

Do we know whether the fish were fresh water or marine? Looking at a map Texarkana seems to be about 400k from the sea.
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I've heard people say they looked like bass (lake) and shad (ocean). But the ID has not been made yet. Samples have been collected.

Edit: Researchers from the U. of Texas Ichthyology department are collecting samples.
 
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