New research suggests birch trees in Italy’s Dolomites maintain a forest-wide group chat, bioelectrically warning their neighbors about upcoming solar eclipses. If you thought only animals went haywire during cosmic events, think again—these trees may just upstage the moon itself during eclipse season.

Diving into the evidence, scientists monitored birch trees during the 2022 solar eclipse and found their bioelectric activity spiked moments before darkness. The birch trees’ secret ‘eclipse alerts’ proved real, as signals crisscrossed the forest in coordinated pulses—nature’s own cosmic messenger system.