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"Animals react to so many things-being hungry, defending their territories, mating, predators-so it's hard to have a controlled study to get that advanced warning signal." "What we're faced with is a lot of anecdotes," said Andy Michael, a geophysicist at USGS. Even though there have been documented cases of strange animal behavior prior to earthquakes, the United States Geological Survey, a government agency that provides scientific information about the Earth, says a reproducible connection between a specific behavior and the occurrence of a quake has never been made. WATCH: Plate tectonics have shuffled the earth’s landmasses around-and continue to do so.Īmerican seismologists, on the other hand, are skeptical. Researchers there have long studied animals in hopes of discovering what they hear or feel before the Earth shakes in order to use that sense as a prediction tool. One of the world's most earthquake-prone countries is Japan, where devastation has taken countless lives and caused enormous damage to property. Of those, 100,000 can be felt by humans, and 100 cause damage. An estimated 500,000 detectable quakes occur in the world each year. Seismologists have no way of knowing exactly when or where the next one will hit. Other ideas suggest they detect electrical changes in the air or gas released from the Earth.Įarthquakes are a sudden phenomenon.
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One theory is that wild and domestic creatures feel the Earth vibrate before humans. Countless pet owners claimed to have witnessed their cats and dogs acting strangely before the ground shook-barking or whining for no apparent reason, or showing signs of nervousness and restlessness.īut precisely what animals sense, if they feel anything at all, is a mystery. Catfish moving violently, chickens that stop laying eggs and bees leaving their hive in a panic have been reported. In 373 B.C., historians recorded that animals, including rats, snakes and weasels, deserted the Greek city of Helice in droves just days before a quake devastated the place.Īccounts of similar animal anticipation of earthquakes have surfaced across the centuries since.