Review: Can Animals Predict Earthquakes?

Abstract

In public perception abnormal animal behavior is widely assumed to be a potential earthquake precursor, in strong contrast to the viewpoint in natural sciences. Proponents of earthquake prediction through animals claim that animals feel and react abnormal to small changes in environmental and physico-chemical parameters which are related to the earthquake preparation process. In seismology, however, observational evidence for changes of physical parameters before earthquakes is very weak.In this study we reviewed 180 publications on abnormal animal behavior before earthquakes, and analyze and discuss them with respect to (i) magnitude-distance relations, (ii) foreshock activity, and (iii) the quality and length of the published observations. More than 700 records of claimed animal precursors related to 160 earthquakes are reviewed with unusual behavior of more than 130 species. The precursor time ranges from months to seconds prior to the earthquakes, and the distances from few to hundreds of kilometers. However, only 14 time series were published, while all other records are single observations. The time series are often short (the longest is 1 year), or only small excerpts of the full data set are shown. The probability density of foreshocks and the occurrence of animal precursors are strikingly similar, suggesting that at least part of the reported animal precursors are in fact related to foreshocks. Another major difficulty for a systematic and statistical analysis is the high diversity of data, which are often only anecdotal and retrospective. The study clearly demonstrates strong weaknesses or even deficits in many of the published reports on possible abnormal animal behavior. In order to improve the research on precursors, we suggest a scheme of yes and no questions to be assessed to ensure the quality of such claims.

Potential short-term earthquake forecasting by farm-animal monitoring

“…Similar observations are rare [14], but recently evidence accumulated that animals in earthquake areas may show aberrant behavior [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. Nevertheless, a recent review [23] points out the sparsity of data and need for testable quantitative measures on animal-anticipated earthquake occurrence.…”

Multi-Level Gas Monitoring: A New Approach in Earthquake Research

“…The selection of the earthquake is often arbitrary. If a magnitude-distance relation is discussed at all, the precursory strain impact at the monitoring site is often calculated according to a formula presented by Dobrovolsky et al (1979), which according to our present-day knowledge over-estimates the size of the earthquake preparation zone significantly (Woith et al, 2018). Only few studies were truly multi-disciplinary, which is fundamental to understand the physics of earthquakes.…”

Timely poacher detection and localization using sentinel animal movement

“…Using animal sentinels as a lens to the environment is in itself not new, as they have long been employed to detect human exposure to biological and chemical hazards (e.g., canaries in coal mines) 27,28 . Moreover, anecdotal evidence has linked animal behavior to the onset of natural disasters 29,30 , and recent evidence suggests that dogs can be used to provide an early warning of epileptic seizures 31 or outbursts of violence 32 . Elucidating the hitherto hidden information in the behavior of animals with cutting-edge technology can help us gauge the conditions of life on Earth 33 .…”