Answer 1:
That's an excellent question! It's a difficult
question to answer, because different animals
almost certainly respond differently to such
situations,and because it's very difficult to
design experiments that test such questions.
My impression is that some animals probably do
reduce their activity when they detect a storm
coming, although it's not clear whether they're
actually detecting pressure changes or some other
cues. However, other animals are most likely
clueless about pressure changes or to approaching
storms, while other animals probably get more
active. For example, I can imagine animals with
very fast metabolisms (so they need to eat very
often), scrambling to find and eat as much food as
possible before being forced to take shelter for
an unknown period of time. Also, if some animals
slow down and stay put,there are probably other
predatory animals that take advantage of that and
increase their hunting in order to find and catch
those animals.
I speculate on all these things,
because there's not a lot of research that
focuses on these questions. Asking whether or
not an animal can detect pressure changes requires
a lot of laboratory research. Even if it's
determined that they can detect pressure changes,
that doesn't prove that the animal uses that
information when a storm approaches. I don't know
how you would answer that question with wild
animals--if you try to answer it with caged
animals, there's no guarantee that captivity
didn't change the animal's behavior. So it's a
very difficult puzzle to solve!
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