3 ms·

Hasn't it been known for a while that dogs and birds react before an earthquake? They must be sensing something we can make an artificial sensor for.

• ducktective 3y ago
  >known for a while dogs and birds react before an earthquake I think I've read somewhere that the ancient Greeks were speculating on this...
• deepsun 3y ago
  No, that's a myth.
  • lxgr 3y ago
    Groups of some animals can predict seismic activity at a rate better than random chance: https://www.icarus.mpg.de/11706/a-four-legged-early-warning-system https://www.icarus.mpg.de/11706/a-four-legged-early-warning-...
    • jcranmer 3y ago
      Your link fails to establish that. The main problem with animal behavior surveys is that they tend to report good results when you start with a known earthquake, and then look backwards to find unusual animal behavior before the earthquake. If you instead try to define objective criteria on animal behavior and then use that as a signal to predict earthquakes, the quality of animal behavior as a predictor turns to crap. In a nutshell, unusual animal behavior precedes most earthquakes... and many more events that turn out not to be earthquakes!
      • lxgr 3y ago
        That's a fair point; a detector that reliably detects impeding once-in-a-century strong earthquakes as well as every wolf or bear wandering too close to some herd of goats is probably not that useful.
      • objektif 3y ago
        You speak of general animal behavior but Where are you basing this on? Is there a study you can link to related to the topic in discussion?
• bragr 3y ago
  >dogs and birds react before an earthquake Earthquakes have what are called primary (P) and secondary (S) waves. The primary is a sharp high frequency wave and the secondary waves are a lower frequency rumble that you feel as the earthquake. The P wave propagates faster so if you're distant from the epicenter the P waves might arrive fractions of a minutes earlier. That's what you see in videos of dogs jumping up and running off or birds taking flight "right before" the earthquake.
  • lxgr 3y ago
    That explains detection seconds before the main tremors, but there's some evidence that some animals change their behavior hours before the actual earthquake, before there are any measurable tremors, so there might be other mechanisms at play.