Wild and Crazy Natural Phenomena: Part 3

The Catatumbo Lightning of Venezuela

The bizarre “Relámpago del Catatumbo” (Catatumbo lightning) is one of the weirdest naturally occurring phenomena on earth. Over the opening where the Catatumbo River runs into Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, there is a nearly perpetual thunderstorm that ocurrs almost every night. This is no ordinary thunderstorm, however. The energy here is so high, that it forms a massive 5km long lightning bolt that just keeps on going for over 10 hours at a time, for between 140 and 160 nights out of the year! Scientists estimate that over 1,176,000 lightning bolts occur every year at that same exact location. The lightning is so bright and so huge, that you can see it from over 400km away!

Total Solar Eclipse

This extremely rare event occurred over Europe on August 11th, 1999, and was witnessed by millions of prepared observers, watching through telescopes and with the naked eye. The Moon moved directly in front of the Sun, completely blocking in out in the middle of a bright and sunny day with no cloud cover. For a few minutes, it was dark out in the daytime! This is a rare and unusual natural phenomena that only occurs once every several years.

Atlantic Salmon Migration

The Atlantic Salmon is probably the most driven, persistent fish on earth. Ever year, a bizarre spectacle occurs during the salmon migration, when millions of these fish try to swim back upstream from the ocean, all the way back to the exact spot where they hatched from an egg.

The crazy part is that this takes them up waterfalls (yes, they literally jump up waterfalls, often right into the waiting mouth of a hungry bear), up rapids, and through water so shallow they can barely fit in it to swim upstream!

The crazy fish often swim right back into fish hatcheries too, by the hundreds of thousands, where fish farmers are able to profit from them, yet again.

The Tree Climbing Goats of Morocco

Morocco is the only place on earth where you will find goats in trees. These goats don’t just climb large trees either. You’ll often see them balancing like a tight-rope walker, out there on some really tiny, small branch.

The goats climb the trees because they love eating the fruit that grows on their branches, and they cannot reach the fruit from the ground.

What’s more weird is what happens after the goats eat the fruit. These goats cannot digest the nuts that are found inside the fruit, so what goes in one end must come out the other. Who cares, right? That’s what you’d think, but you’d be wrong. Farmers come from miles around to collect the goats’ droppings, and pick the nuts out of them. The farmers then grind up the nuts found in the goat droppings too make oil which is then used in cooking and cosmetics. Yes, you read right. They make cooking oil, makeup, and lotion out of the goat’s poop.