Unusual Animal Behaviour before Earthquakes and Multiple Parameter Monitoring in Western Piedmont

Abstract

The complex synergy of various non-seismic precursor phenomena renders difficult to specify what are the chemical and physical parameters, whose variations give more problems to the animal and plant kingdoms. Local seismic events are generally seldom announced by anomalous animal behaviours. Unfortunately we do not understand animal languages or their meaningful vocal modulations. Moreover, many animal alarms are not acknowledged. A number of animal and human observations in Northern Italy are reported, which can suggests physical observations potentially connected with seismic events. The study of seismic precursors is still in its infancy, the error margin on temporal and spatial forecast is still large and must be evaluated. Being so, a multiple parameter physical monitoring started recently in Western Piedmont, which is useful to propose the study of seismic precursors possibly linked to animal behaviour. Electric and magnetic detectors were operating together with alpha particle and acoustic detectors, while a collection of anomalous biological and meteorological observations were taken. Variations in the recent years of the magnetic declination revealed to be a good candidate to precursor, related to the direction of compression, traction and stretching on rocks, even if the geographic localization of future earthquakes is still impossible. In case of some local unusual animal behaviours it can suggest the occurrence of a local seismic event with epicentre distance ≤ 100 km. Statistical information on warnings from local dogs and cats are given.

A comparison of hearing and auditory functioning between dogs and humans

“…Body organs resonate within the low-frequency range, and common complaints relating to being within environment emitting certain types of infrasound include the subjective feeling of vibrations; nausea; disorientation; and, potentially with higher intensities, organ damage or death (Bunker, 1997;Leventhal, 2003). There is much anecdotal evidence that dogs, like many other species, are able to predict natural disasters such as earthquakes or storms (Liso, Fidani, & Viotto, 2014), and they are used as part of an early warning system in some countries (Woith, Petersen, Hainzl, & Dahm, 2018). However, the way that they might be able to sense these changes has not been scientifically investigated.…”

Some Tonal and Rhythmical Sequences in the Vocal Language of Dogs as Significant Earthquake Precursors

“…It is interesting to note the concomitance of the radon emission peak two days before the earthquake in Finale Emilia, as can be seen in Graphic 4. The high values of radon emitted in a few days immediately damage small animals such as spiders, insects, snails or amphibians or reptiles; the dogs however, often raise their snouts to smell the strongly ionized air [4].…”

“…This Centre is located in Torre Pellice (44˚49'235''N, 7˚123'04''E, Western Piedmont, NW Italy) at 699 m, above sea level on Vandalino Mountain [1]. This research is founded on two levels of contemporaneous observations: observations about eventual anomalies of some physical parameters, recorded in a multiple parameter monitoring, and observations on the behaviours of domestic and wild animals [2] [3] [4].…”