Night creatures world cup

Dark nights and the absence of light pollution is really important for animals, as well as critical for really good stargazing. During the North Pennines Stargazing Festival we take the opportunity to focus on animals that are active during the hours of darkness.

The North Pennines National Landscape team has selected 16 animals that are predominantly nocturnal and crepuscular, and that can be found in the North Pennines National Landscape.

Definitions

Nocturnal – active at night

Dirurnal – active during the day

Crepuscular – active at dusk and dawn (if you want to get even more technical… matutinal animals are most active at dawn and vespertine for dusk-loving beasts)

The serious bit

Life on Earth has evolved over geological time alongside the natural cycle of daylight and night-time. Unfortunately increasing use of lights at night has blurred this rhythm of dark and light. This can lead to challenging conditions for biodiversity. Some examples, include:

• birds being killed whilst migrating as they become disoriented and exhausted circling and flying into brightly-lit buildings and other structures
• 60% of insects are nocturnal and are often killed when confused and attracted to artificial light
• artificial light has been found to disrupt feeding in some bats

We thought we’d run a ‘creatures of the night’ world cup on our social media channels – facebook.com/NorthPenninesNL and instagram.com/northpenninesnl – for a bit of fun. So, if you’re following us, watch out for the polls and vote for your favourite creatures of the night in the group stage, quarter finals, semis and, ultimately, the grand final.

Visit our Stargazing Week hub for more events, blogs and features.
#NightCreaturesWorldCup #NorthPennStargazingFestival