There are many stories about various animals behaving strangely before global natural disasters, primarily earthquakes. It is believed that they can predict cataclysms. We decided to check if this is actually true.

One of the earliest mentions of such animal behavior applies to the times of Ancient Greece. “A few days before the earthquake that destroyed the city of Helikos in Greece, moles, weasels, echidnas and centipedes emerged from their holes and took to a disorderly flight,” wrote an unknown observer in 328 BC. e. There is also more recent evidence: in 1835, before the devastating earthquake in Chile, almost all dogs left the epicenter of the approaching catastrophe, in 1976 in Italy and in 1979 in the USA, on the eve of the cataclysm, cats rushed around the rooms, scratched doors and windows and carried out their kittens outside, in 2008, thousands of toads filled streets of the village three days before the settlement was almost completely destroyed by tremors. In 2008, there was even a registered patent for an earthquake prediction system based on animal behavior. True, it was not brought to life due to the high cost of creating appropriate weather stations. But in China valid a whole network of such biopolygons.

Many folk signs are associated with the behavior of animals and subsequent changes in weather: sparrows "swimming" in the sand, and frogs are more active croak - to the rain, birds fly low - bad weather, cats sleeping on the back, with paws spread to the sides - for warm and clear weather. In times of lack of meteorological observation, this method was the only option for weather prediction. Despite all the advances in science, earthquake forecasting today is still far from perfect. Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences Evgeniy Aleksandrovich Rogozhin reports, that “if there is a network of seismic stations, this is enough to make a seismological forecast. It is quite stable in the long term, that is, if you predict earthquakes for, say, the next five years. Medium-term forecasts (say, for the next year) are already a little worse - there is higher uncertainty. If you want to create a short-term forecast—for the next day or week—then the seismological method is almost useless.”

It was with the incorrect short-term forecast that the indictment was associated sentence six seismological scientists and one official in the Italian city of L'Aquila. They were sentenced to six years in prison because they did not consider the situation dangerous, and the earthquake that occurred resulted in the death of almost 300 people. Misinterpretation of data became cause of mass casualties in 2011 as well. Then Japanese seismologists predicted, based on scientific data, an earthquake on the island of Honshu. The earthquake of magnitude 7.6 that occurred on March 9 was regarded by them as a major one and precautionary measures and informing the population were canceled. However, it turned out that these tremors were, scientifically speaking, only a foreshock - a preliminary earthquake, and a more destructive one, magnitude 9, happened two days later. Then died more than 15,000 people and more than 2,000 more missing. Moreover, 80 seconds before the main cataclysm worked a warning system that nevertheless saved many lives.

At the same time, animals, judging by the data eyewitnesses, begin to change their behavior over a longer period of time separated from the disaster - from several hours to a couple of days. By data National Geographic, male common toads are highly seismically sensitive. Before the earthquake in L'Aquila, they began to leave the pond located more than 70 km from the epicenter: “Five days before the cataclysm, 96% of the males left the pond, and in three days all the toads left.” Mice can sense a disaster in 10–15 days, fish in 1–10 depending on their location, domestic chickens in 1–3 days, dogs, parrots and canaries in a couple of hours. Seismological sensitivity notice also for cats, pigs, horses, cows and sheep.

The data is confirmed experimentally. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior studied six cows, five sheep, one rabbit, four chickens, two turkeys and two dogs on farms in a seismologically active zone in Italy. The animals were equipped with a speed and location monitoring sensor. Their behavior actually changed 20 hours or less before the tremors. Moreover, they began to worry and move as far as possible from the epicenter even before very weak earthquakes, with a magnitude of only 0.4, which for humans absolutely invisible.

Козы, Рога, Борода, Животные, Ферма, Домашний Скот

Scientists from NASA and the British Open University studied the phenomenon of a mass exodus of toads from reservoirs near L'Aquila. They found that when the earth is subjected to great pressure from tectonic forces, special charged particles are released - ions. Positively charged ions cause serotonin syndrome, which causes headaches, nausea and anxiety in people. They have a similar effect on animals. They say authors of the study. This and other chemical reactions can act as a signaling mechanism to warn animals of danger. At the same time, scientists themselves say that further research is needed to clarify the mechanisms of seismological alertness of animals so that they can be fully used to predict disasters.

In 1983–1985, American scientists were looking for a pattern between an increase in the number of newspaper ads in the San Jose Mercury News about missing or found pets in the San Francisco area. It was assumed that, anticipating disaster, cats and dogs should run away from home more often than usual. However, scientists have not identified such a connection. However, they clarified that a study of newspaper advertisements is an insufficient source of data, given that not all pet owners will place a paid advertisement that the animal may have gone away to give birth, been stolen, or been hit in an accident, and also the fact that after an earthquake, owners may have more pressing tasks than searching for a pet that may have died in the rubble. We also couldn't find any news stories about the animals acting normally before the disaster. Perhaps this explains survivor bias and the fact that after an earthquake, the news primarily reports about dead and injured people, and not about pets.

Michael Blancpid, assistant coordinator of the US Geological Survey's Earthquake Hazards Program configured less optimistic. He says that seismologists would certainly like to have an accessible system for predicting earthquakes, but animal behavior does not seem to form the basis for it.

Thus, there are many documented cases of animals changing their behavior before an earthquake and even saving people in this way. However, scientists have not yet reached a consensus on a specific mechanism that could explain this change in behavior. At the same time, further research may someday be able to fill the gaps in our knowledge, and pets will become reliable sensors of impending disasters.