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Can Animals Predict Earthquakes? It's Complicated.
Can Animals Predict Earthquakes? It’s Complicated.
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By: Laura Goldman
May 1, 2018
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Follow Laura at @lauragoldman
As a resident of the Los Angeles area for many years, I’ve experienced quite a few earthquakes. And as a pet owner, one of the most common questions I’m asked afterward is, “Were your dogs acting weird before it happened?”
Usually the answer is no, although sometimes I could swear they seemed agitated before the ground started shaking. Many other pet owners have observed the same thing.
But according to a new study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, dogs and other animals can’t predict earthquakes the way we previously assumed. For the first time, researchers used a statistical approach to evaluate more than 700 reports of abnormal behavior observed in animals ranging from silkworms to elephants prior to 160 earthquakes in two dozen countries.
Based on those reports, researchers at the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam determined the observations were unscientific and anecdotal.
The problem, according to the researchers, is that these behavior observations have no clearly defined rules, such as the earthquake’s magnitude, the distance of the animal from the epicenter, or if the animal displayed the same behavior when there was no earthquake afterward.
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Some of the reported animal behaviors began months before the earthquakes, while others occurred seconds before the ground shook. The distances from the epicenters ranged from just a few to hundreds of miles. Only 14 of the reports were a series of observations over a period of time. The rest were single observations, many of which were from the 2010 Darfield earthquake in New Zealand, the 1984 Nagano-ken Seibu earthquake in Japan and the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake in Italy.
“Up to now, only very few time series with animal behavior exist at all, the longest being just one year,” one of the researchers, Dr. Heiko Woith, a hydrogeologist who studies the interaction between earthquakes and fluids, said in a press release.
Without those long-term observations, researchers can’t truly be certain that the animals’ behaviors were related to earthquakes. Factors like other environmental changes or even the animals’ health could be the culprit. As an example, Woith cited one report that observed toads acting “abnormally” both before and after an earthquake.
To conclude that abnormal animal behavior really does predict earthquakes, the researchers said that future studies need to have a stricter, quantitative definition of “unusual or abnormal behavior” along with a physical explanation for the behavior change.
Animals Do React to Foreshocks
The researchers also seemed to contradict themselves by noting that foreshocks and strange animal behavior were strongly clustered together in their statistical analysis – which seems to mean that some of those behaviors could indeed be related to a seismic event in progress.
“The animals may sense seismic waves … generated by foreshocks,” Woith said. “Another option could be secondary effects triggered by the foreshocks, like changes in groundwater or release of gases from the ground which might be sensed by the animals.”
This was proven several years ago after researchers set up cameras at ground level in Peru’s Yanachanga National Park to observe the activity of rodents.
A few weeks before a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the area in 2011, many of the rodents and other animals disappeared. Five days before the earthquake, all the animals vanished.
The researchers said that during seismic activity, electrically charged molecules raise the serotonin levels in the bloodstreams of both animals and humans, causing agitation, hyperactivity and other uncomfortable symptoms. To avoid this discomfort, animals will leave, if they can.
“Animals have the potential to be reliable forecasters of earthquakes and could be used alongside other monitoring systems,” Dr. Rachel Grant, that study’s lead author, told Reuters in 2015. “The system could be used in developing and earthquake-prone countries, it is affordable and feasible to implement as it just requires someone to monitor animal behavior … there is no need for satellites.”
Perhaps it’s just a matter of semantics. Animals may not be able to “predict” earthquakes, but they certainly do seem to be able to sense seismic activity before humans can.
An early-warning system is currently in the works for Los Angeles. In the meantime, if you happen to live there or in another earthquake-prone area that has no warning system, keeping an eye on your pets’ behavior might be the next best thing.
Photo credit: William Warby
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19 comments
Ruth S
Ruth S20 minutes ago
Thanks.
SEND
Brad H
Brad H33 minutes ago
thanks
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Ann B
Ann B41 minutes ago
Animals are smarter than we are
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Bill Eagle
Bill Eabout an hour ago
Animals are much more sensitive, than we are, to the world around them.
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Sherri S
Sherri Sabout an hour ago
Not surprising that animals have this special sense.
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Janis K
Janis K2 hours ago
Thanks for sharing.
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Chrissie R
Chrissie R2 hours ago
Living in California I experienced many earthquakes but I can't say that my pets ever acted "weird".
SEND
Sherry K
Sherry K3 hours ago
Noted
SEND
Danii P
Danii P4 hours ago
thank you
SEND
No W
No W6 hours ago
thank you for posting
SEND
view all 19 comments
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