Who is Better at Predicting Earthquakes: Animals or scientist with instruments? Evidence collected so far suggests than an ordinary animal - a dog, a horse, a pig may give as a reliable warning of an impending earthquake as the scientists.
Why can't we predict earthquakes? planet-science
The processes that cause earthquakes mostly occur far below the Earth's surface. There are many tectonic plates - sections of the Earth's crust that rub together and cause earthquakes - and their interactions are complex. This makes earthquakes very hard to study.
In 1974, several months before massive earthquake in China, pigs climbed the walls, hens would not roost and trained dogs ignored commands. The Chinese heeded this and other signs and evacuated people before the quake start, thereby saving several hundred thousand lives. 7.3-magnitude quake hits Haicheng City.
Now,
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Mr. Wikelski, a German scientist, studied and monitor goats and sheep behavior. From 2012 to 2014, he monitored the behavior of the animals, he put tags and sophisticated sensors that monitor and measure the movement, direction, temperature, altitude, speed and location.
Result:
The animals predicted the major volcanic eruptions during these two years between four to six hours before,” he said, adding that eight major eruptions occurred during his study. “At night, the animals woke up and nervously walked around, and in daytime, they moved to a safe area” where high vegetation suggested that it had been spared by previous lava flows.
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His experiment is now part of the German-Russian project called ICARUS( International Cooperation for Animal Research)
They are using space satellite for monitoring the animal that was tagged.
Simple but powerful idea. Can we learn from animals? We will soon find out.