Imagine hiking near your neighbourhood hills with your friends on a pleasant Sunday morning, happily ignorant of all your stress and worries. Imagine the cool breeze flowing through your hair, closing your eyes to enjoy the moment when suddenly…you notice the earth heaving up and down!
Up and down as if the forest is breathing; gasping for air.
Wouldn’t it be damn scary?! I bet it would be.
That’s exactly what happens in this horrifying video shared by a Twitter user, Daniel Holland. “The ground looks like it’s breathing in this Quebec forest”, Daniel wrote.
The ground looks like it's breathing in this Quebec forest. pic.twitter.com/AeETAYJOdN
— Daniel Holland (@DannyDutch) October 20, 2018
Whoa, no special effects there! Isn’t it terrifying?
People were quick to spin their own theories to explain the ‘mystery’
— Crypt McDonald (@chris_kaiju) October 20, 2018
Nope..nope…nope
It’s a giant turtle, don’t even try to convince me otherwise pic.twitter.com/7dykFRC9tX
— Josh (@JAm29JOSH) October 20, 2018
Sounds legit
Nah dis a Pokemon
— Chill (@FuckDetroit) October 20, 2018
Most found it stupefying and terrifying, for obvious reasons
this is both terrifying and interesting at the same time
— rあfa #mono (@illicit_bts) October 20, 2018
But Daniel was quick to bust their myths & shared the actual explanation for this not-so-rare phenomenon
Apparently it’s loose soil combined with wind pulling the trees.
— Daniel Holland (@DannyDutch) October 20, 2018
Breathing forests aren’t uncommon and the internet has seen a lot of videos since 2012. Explaining the cause of this video, Mark Vanderwouw, a certified arborist tells The Weather Network,
“During a rain and windstorm event the ground becomes saturated, ‘loosening’ the soil’s cohesion with the roots as the wind is blowing on a tree’s crown,”
The wind tries to ‘push’ the trees over, and as the force is transferred to the roots, the ground begins to ‘heave’. If the winds were strong enough and lasted long enough more roots would start to break and eventually some of the trees would topple, he claims.
So the next time you witness a ‘breathing forest’ in person, do what our forefathers used to do best: RUN! And ‘heave’ a sigh of relief that the floor didn’t consume you. 😉