{"id":2207285,"date":"2026-09-09T06:00:24","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T05:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?p=2207285"},"modified":"2026-09-12T14:03:38","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T13:03:38","slug":"they-were-bouncing-off-umbrellas-and-pavements-and-hopped-off-in-their-hundreds-10-times-it-rained-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/they-were-bouncing-off-umbrellas-and-pavements-and-hopped-off-in-their-hundreds-10-times-it-rained-animals\/","title":{"rendered":"“They were bouncing off umbrellas and pavements and hopped off in their hundreds\u2026\u201d 10 times it rained animals"},"content":{"rendered":"
You\u2019ve heard of it raining cats and dogs. Thankfully, it\u2019s just a figure of speech, but did you know that sometimes it really does rain animals?<\/p>\n
From starfish and shrimp to fish and frogs, sometimes creatures really do fall from the sky. The episodes leave people running for cover and scratching their heads, prompting explanations that range from the magical to the meteorological.\u00a0\u00a0Here are ten of the most bizarre \u2018anomalous precipitation\u2019 events.<\/p>\n
Ten times it rained animals<\/h2>\n
The seafood storm\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
When violent storms struck the coastal city of Qingdao in Shandong Province, China, in June 2018, residents were prepared for the rain. What they weren\u2019t prepared for was the seafood salad that fell with it.<\/p>\n
Photos\u00a0posted to social media revealed\u00a0molluscs\u00a0and shellfish falling from the sky.\u00a0Starfish\u00a0were photographed next to car windscreen wipers, while\u00a0shrimps\u00a0were pictured splattered across cars.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s thought that strong offshore winds created spinning columns of air and mist, known as waterspouts, which sucked the marine life into the sky. Then, as the winds weakened over land, the animals fell to earth. Waterspouts are one of the most common and credible explanations for animal rain.<\/p>\n
In August 1892, hundreds of mussels clattered down on the streets of Paderborn, Germany. A yellowish cloud swept towards the town before bursting into a torrential downpour, leaving the pavements littered with broken bivalves.<\/p>\n
The spectacle was\u00a0witnessed\u00a0and documented by an affiliate of the Berlin Meteorological Office, and a specimen was sent to the Berlin Museum. The mussels were\u00a0Anodonta anatina<\/em>, a freshwater species known also as the duck mussel. Naturalists later traced them to a mussel-rich pool about 10 kilometres away, indicating that a waterspout may have plucked them from the water and then carried them through the air.<\/p>\n
The Cotswolds is famous for its rolling hills, quaint villages and distinctive buildings made from honey-coloured stone. What the tourist brochures fail to mention, however, is that in 1987, the area suffered from several reports of anomalous precipitation involving\u00a0frogs.<\/p>\n
A local woman recalled how \u201ctiny rose-coloured frogs” came down in torrential rain near the market town of Stroud. She told the\u00a0Stroud News & Journal, they were \u201cbouncing off umbrellas and pavements and hopped off in their hundreds to nearby streams and gardens.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0A similar downpour was reported in nearby Cirencester.<\/p>\n
Quite how the frogs got there remains a mystery. Some suggested that the little\u00a0amphibians\u00a0had been swept up in Saharan winds from Africa. Others proposed that the\u00a0fertilised eggs\u00a0of local species had been sucked into a waterspout, where they hatched, before falling to the ground as frogs. Or perhaps there was no\u00a0frog rain\u00a0at all: the frogs may simply have emerged after the hail to enjoy the damp conditions.<\/p>\n
A sprinkle of spiders\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n
Credit: Pablo H Capovilla, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Not one for the arachnophobes. On\u00a027 December 2024, hundreds of spiders appeared to descend gently from the sky above the quiet town of S\u00e3o Thom\u00e9 das Letras, Brazil. Footage of the slow motion spectacle went viral on social media, but it wasn\u2019t quite what it seemed.<\/p>\n
The spiders were\u00a0Parawixia bistriata<\/em>, a\u00a0social orb-weaver\u00a0species that builds individual webs within a much larger communal structure. Suspended between trees and bushes, these webs can be enormous, but their delicate threads are almost invisible from the ground. The result is an optical illusion: rather than raining from the sky, the spiders were simply hanging in their web, waiting for prey to arrive.<\/p>\n
A shower of shad\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n
Jay Fleming\/ Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
29 December 2021. The local cats were delighted. During afternoon thunderstorms,\u00a0residents\u00a0in Texarkana, Texas, witnessed hundreds of\u00a0fish falling\u00a0from the sky. They landed on roads, lawns, parking lots, rooftops and other surfaces, across an area of\u00a0roughly nine square miles.<\/p>\n
At first, the event was attributed to a waterspout, which might have sucked up the gizzard shad and \u2018rained\u2019 them back down. But then some of the\u00a0fish\u00a0were found to show signs of being partially digested. Large flocks of\u00a0cormorants\u00a0had been seen nearby, so the suggestion is that the birds had swallowed the shad and then regurgitated them when they got spooked by the storm. It’s only a theory, not a proven solution \u2014 but if it’s right, Texarkana’s fish rain was actually bird vomit falling from the sky.<\/p>\n
Teeming down with tadpoles\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n
In June 2009, residents in the Ishikawa Prefecture of Japan reported\u00a0tadpoles\u00a0apparently falling from the sky. In the city of Nanao, a 55-year-old man was reportedly showered with the wrigglers, which covered an area of about ten square metres. Then two days later, officials in nearby Hakusan reported a similar incident.<\/p>\n
This created a ripple effect.\u00a0\u00a0From Hiroshima in the south-west to Iwate in the north-east, people\u00a0all over the country\u00a0reported finding dead\u00a0tadpoles\u00a0in gardens and fields, and on car roofs and windscreens. There were no strong winds at the time, casting doubt on the waterspout theory. Birds\u00a0could\u00a0<\/em>have regurgitated them, but in the absence of related evidence, the mystery remains as slippery as the tadpoles themselves.<\/p>\n
Bucketing down with blackbirds\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n
imageBROKER\/ Stefan Huwiler\/ Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Shortly before midnight on New Year\u2019s Eve, 2010, around 4,000\u00a0red-winged blackbirds\u00a0fell from the sky in Beebe, Arkansas.\u00a0They\u00a0fell over an area of around a square mile, landing on streets, houses and fields. One bird hit a woman walking her dog. Another struck a police car.<\/p>\n
Necropsies showed that the birds had died from blunt-force trauma, including broken bones and damaged organs. It\u2019s thought that fireworks disrupted a huge flock of\u00a0blackbirds\u00a0from their nighttime roost. The birds took off but flew low to avoid the pyrotechnics. Big mistake. Blackbirds have poor night vision, and it wasn\u2019t long before they started colliding with things. Then, a year later, the same thing happened again. Same time. Same place. So much for a Happy New Year.<\/p>\n
Lluvia de peces<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n
Aleksei Permiakov\/ Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
According to the locals, it regularly rains fish in Yoro, Honduras. Every year, between May and June, small sardine-like fish appear on the streets after heavy seasonal thunderstorms.\u00a0\u00a0The event is so predictable, it even has its own celebration. The \u2018Festival de Lluvia de Peces\u2019 (Festival of the Rain of Fish), involves a carnival, a parade and the \u2018Se\u00f1orita Lluvia de Peces\u2019 (Miss Fish Rain) Pageant.<\/p>\n
Some say the fish are a miracle. According to local legend, in 1855 a Spanish priest spent three days and nights praying for the hungry inhabitants of Honduras. Then fish fell from the sky. Waterspouts provide another explanation, but the closest sea is more than 40 miles away.<\/p>\n
A third theory is that the fish come from\u00a0underground caverns or rivers, surfacing when heavy rain causes waterways to overflow. This could explain why the fish tend to be found on the ground, rather than on raised surfaces, such as rooftops or car bonnets. So perhaps \u2018Lluvia de Peces\u2019 would be better renamed \u2018Peces que surgen de la tierra\u2019 \u2013 fish that rise from the ground.<\/p>\n
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