Thursday, March 28, 2024
Contact    |    RSS icon Twitter icon Facebook icon  
Unexplained Mysteries
You are viewing: Home > News > World of the Bizarre > News story
Welcome Guest ( Login or Register )  
All ▾
Search Submit

World of the Bizarre

Sharknado - can animals fall from the sky ?

By T.K. Randall
July 25, 2013 · Comment icon 9 comments

Image Credit: Mila Zinkova
There have been numerous incidents throughout history of animals raining down from the heavens.
In the recent SyFy Channel movie "Sharknado" the story centered around the idea that sharks had been picked up by a tornado and later dropped from the sky. While sharks are far too heavy to be picked up like this in real life, the concept itself is surprisingly not that far-fetched. There have been numerous incidents over the years in which small aquatic animals such as fish and frogs have inexplicably rained down from above.

In March 2010, one such event took place in Lajamanu, Australia when residents reported hearing solid objects falling on to their rooftops during stormy weather. Upon investigating they discovered that the objects were actually small fish that had littered the whole street. Meteorologists at the time put the bizarre incident down to a tornado that would have whisked the fish up from a river and carried them up to several hundred miles before dumping them on the town.[!gad]In the recent SyFy Channel movie "Sharknado" the story centered around the idea that sharks had been picked up by a tornado and later dropped from the sky. While sharks are far too heavy to be picked up like this in real life, the concept itself is surprisingly not that far-fetched. There have been numerous incidents over the years in which small aquatic animals such as fish and frogs have inexplicably rained down from above.

In March 2010, one such event took place in Lajamanu, Australia when residents reported hearing solid objects falling on to their rooftops during stormy weather. Upon investigating they discovered that the objects were actually small fish that had littered the whole street. Meteorologists at the time put the bizarre incident down to a tornado that would have whisked the fish up from a river and carried them up to several hundred miles before dumping them on the town.
Tornadoes over water are too weak to lift sharks, but strong enough to bring smaller animals ashore. Sharks fell from the sky in the SyFy Channel’s “Sharknado,” a campy movie that stirred up Internet buzz and is getting a sequel.


Source: National Geographic | Comments (9)




Other news and articles
Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #1 Posted by Jacques Terreur 11 years ago
i gotta admit i LOVED sharknado!!! As for this phenomenon though, i don't love the waterspout explanation quite as much..... on the first thought it's like "yeah of course, that's it!", but if you look into the reports about those "animal rains", it's very often just one single species of animal that falls down. I would expect a watersprout not to be so picky.....
Comment icon #2 Posted by WoIverine 11 years ago
Frogs do, as the urban legend goes.
Comment icon #3 Posted by Junior Chubb 11 years ago
Animals have fallen from the sky in the past and will fall from the sky in the future...
Comment icon #4 Posted by Jacques Terreur 11 years ago
to anyone who's into that kind of stuff i highly recommend to read Charles Fort's "book of the damned".....
Comment icon #5 Posted by pallidin 11 years ago
"In real life, of course, sharks don’t fall from the sky. But fish, frogs, and alligators do..." Well, thank you for my new random nightmare.
Comment icon #6 Posted by ShadowSot 11 years ago
Actually, while the theory is a waterspout, there's never been any actual witnessing of the animals falling. And it seems kinda doubtful that animals would survive such a fall. Frog for example have a tendency to go "splat" when dropped from a height.
Comment icon #7 Posted by Jacques Terreur 11 years ago
there are SO MANY reports of all sorts of animals falling from the sky, i am almost sure that there are some occurences where people actually watched it happen. But it's also true that if you drop, say, a frog from a certain height, it will flatten out pretty much....It's a very odd phenomenon, but i don't really buy in the waterspout theory, and i don't know if it would be that cool as a prank for people to stage these things over and over again.
Comment icon #8 Posted by ShadowSot 11 years ago
there are SO MANY reports of all sorts of animals falling from the sky, i am almost sure that there are some occurences where people actually watched it happen. But it's also true that if you drop, say, a frog from a certain height, it will flatten out pretty much....It's a very odd phenomenon, but i don't really buy in the waterspout theory, and i don't know if it would be that cool as a prank for people to stage these things over and over again. There are many reports of say, after a rain storm seeing lots of frogs. But not a lot of reports of actually seeing them fall. Ther's the difference... [More]
Comment icon #9 Posted by Jacques Terreur 11 years ago
ah, nice read for some rather boring work hours, thx! i read the "book of the damned" years ago, so my memory isn't the best, but i could swear it contains a newspaper report of people getting hit by falling fish.... i go through that skeptoid article now to see what they say....


Please Login or Register to post a comment.


Our new book is out now!
Book cover

The Unexplained Mysteries
Book of Weird News

 AVAILABLE NOW 

Take a walk on the weird side with this compilation of some of the weirdest stories ever to grace the pages of a newspaper.

Click here to learn more

We need your help!
Patreon logo

Support us on Patreon

 BONUS CONTENT 

For less than the cost of a cup of coffee, you can gain access to a wide range of exclusive perks including our popular 'Lost Ghost Stories' series.

Click here to learn more

Top 10 trending mysteries
Recent news and articles