Since ancient times, people have been saying that animals become more agitated before an earthquake, aware that something is amiss hours before the devastation occurs. Now the anecdotal observations have been put to the scientific test — with some remarkable results.
Researchers reporting in the journal Ethology tagged dogs, cows, and sheep with technical gadgetry that can sense changes in their activity patterns, conducting their work in a farming region of Italy where seismic activity has been common. Their finding: the animals’ patterns of movement sped up before even small earthquakes. The closer the epicenter of the quake, the more hours ahead that the animals reacted — up to 15 hours in some instances, and certainly enough time to get out of harm’s way.
What, specifically, the dogs and other animals may be sensing is not clear. It could be that they’re picking up on the scent of gases released from the earth before an earthquake. Whatever the mechanism, this preliminary finding is important. Right now, there are no reliable technological systems for warning about an earthquake’s timing. We are left to find out about each one pretty much at the moment the earth rumbles and opens before us.
