Editing Crop circle (section)

=== Natural origins ===

==== Weather ====
It has been suggested that crop circles may be the result of extraordinary meteorological phenomena ranging from freak [[tornado]]es to [[ball lightning]], but there is no evidence of any crop circle being created by any of these causes.<ref name="Taylor2011" /><ref name="csicop" />

In 1880, an amateur scientist, John Rand Capron, wrote a letter to the editor of journal ''Nature'' about some circles in crops and blamed them on a recent storm, saying their shape was "suggestive of some cyclonic wind action".{{refn|group=n|name= "Capron1880"}}

In 1980, Terence Meaden, a meteorologist and physicist, proposed that the circles were caused by whirlwinds whose course was affected by southern England hills.<ref name="Taylor2011" /> As circles became more complex, Terence had to create increasingly complex theories, blaming an electromagneto-hydrodynamic "plasma vortex".<ref name="Taylor2011" /> The meteorological theory became popular, and it was even referenced in 1991 by physicist [[Stephen Hawking]] who said that, "Corn circles are either hoaxes or formed by vortex movement of air".<ref name="Taylor2011" /> The weather theory suffered a serious blow in 1991, but Hawking's point about hoaxes was supported when Bower and Chorley stated that they had been responsible for making all those circles.{{refn|group=n|name="Taylor2011_note"|In a ''Physics World'' article Richard Taylor wrote, "Today, with the benefit of hindsight, such explanations sound rather contrived. At the height of the debate, though, no less a physicist than Stephen Hawking was prepared to accept some version of Meaden's theory. When a spate of circles appeared in the countryside near his Cambridge home in 1991, Hawking told a local newspaper that "crop circles are either hoaxes or formed by vortex movement of air"<ref>{{harvnb|Taylor|2011}}</ref>}} By the end of 1991 Meaden conceded that those circles that had complex designs were made by hoaxers.<ref>{{cite book |author1=Simon Hoggart |url=https://archive.org/details/bizarrebeliefs0000hogg |title=Bizarre Beliefs |author2=Mike Hutchinson |publisher=Richard Cohen Books |year=1995 |isbn=9781573921565 |location=London |page=[https://archive.org/details/bizarrebeliefs0000hogg/page/59 59] |url-access=registration}} Cited in {{harvnb|Nickell|2002}}</ref>

==== Animal activity ====
In 2009, the attorney general for the island state of [[Tasmania]] stated that Australian [[Wallaby|wallabies]] had been found creating crop circles in fields of [[opium poppy|opium poppies]], which are grown legally for medicinal use, after consuming some of the opiate-laden poppies and running in circles.<ref>{{Cite news |date=25 June 2009 |title=Stoned wallabies make crop circles |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8118257.stm |access-date=31 May 2011 |newspaper=BBC News}}</ref>