Do Animals Really Sense Danger?

In April 2009, British researchers were studying the common toad at a breeding site in central Italy when they “observed a mass exodus of toads,” Jill Lawless reports for the Associated Press.

Just five days later, a 6.3-magnitude earthquake hit, killing some 150 people and causing extensive damage to the town of L’Aquila.

Rachel Grant, a researcher at Open University and lead author of one of the first studies to document animal behavior surrounding earthquakes, believes “that toads are able to detect pre-seismic cues such as the release of gases and charged particles, and use these as a form of earthquake early warning system.”

According to the study, “Predicting the unpredictable; evidence of pre-seismic anticipatory behaviour in the common toad,” the toad population at the breeding site dropped to zero three days prior to the quake.

Source

Thoughts?

Back in the early 90's I lived in Washington state. We had a small earthquake during the night. Shortly before it happened, my parrot went absolutely nuts. He squawked and screamed, dragged his beak along the cage, and just basically freaked out for several minutes. He'd never done anything like that before. It didn't occur to me until the next day that he may have sensed the earthquake coming.

I know my cats did before one hit in Oregon many years ago. The strange thing is I did too! Four days before the earthquake, I had this surreal feeling that the ground did not feel stable. I had never been in an earthquake, and even mentioned to my roomates, has there ever been an earthquake here? To which they responded no. Four days later , we had a 6.5 . My cats were going nuts before hand.

I felt like everything was off for that whole 4 days prior.

reply to post by amatrine


You should participate in the 'alternative methods of predicting earthquakes' thread, quite interesting. I know now that I am an earthquake sensitive, I 'feel' things prior to a quake, not only in my area, we have very few here, but anywhere in the world.
And to answer the topic at hand, yes animals of all kinds can sense an earthquake, we need to start listening.

I can only speak for my own two animals behavior. My house is old and I have a 14 lb. cat and an 11 pound dog and when we had the small-ish (4.3 I think?) earthquake in Illinois back in the beginning of February it felt like it does when the animals get to chasing around after each other. I had always heard that animals are supposed to be sensitive to earthquakes, but when I felt the shaking I looked (my very first thought being that the pets were running) and both animals were curled up together on the couch sound asleep. Neither one of them even woke up. I think they are broken and I probably shouldn't rely on them to be accurate earthquake predictors in the future.

Everyone else that I've ever mentioned this to, though, has said that they did notice a definite difference in behaviors with their own pets. Like I said, I think mine must be broken or way too laid back to care when it comes to predicting things like earthquakes.

Take care,
Cindi

i beleve that animals can secnse more then just earth related dangers. my dog use to bark at my uncle all the time no matter where he went, if my dog herd him he would bark non-stop. it turnd out that my uncle was a druggy and a child molester...hes in jail thank god. but anyway that was the first time he had ever done that, untell i brought one of my boyfriends over to the house. my dog did the same thing, he barked non-stop but i ignored him and continued to date him. BIG MISSTAKE! i dont wana go into the story that hapend though, sorry. oh and btw, i live in a house with five dogs and all the others would be ok and they would stop barking, exeped for my dog. hes my guardian angel

Thanks OP, that's interesting. I hadn't read about the toads before.

I do believe that animals are earthquake sensitive…except maybe Glencairn's lol

I have a dog whose behavior tends to get very odd in the preceding 24-48 hours before an earthquake. It took me a while to connect the dots when she was younger, because she's kind of a big squirrelly dog anyway. But now, I am convinced that she definitely has some kind of sixth sense and somehow she just "knows" these things. And since she can't talk, I think her odd behavior may be just her way of trying to communicate what she knows.

It's true that animals are a lot more sensitive to certain things than we humans are, so maybe the explanation is that they're able to pick up on the release of gases and charged particles before an earthquake. Or maybe somehow they just have some kind of sixth sense for these things, both upcoming earthquakes and other things too. Either way though, I honestly do think that some of them actually do know.

reply to post by GorehoundLarry


Intersting that you should mention this GorehoundLarry (love the name)

I live in Sichuan Province (For the moment at least). As you may know a massive earthquake hit here in 2008, killing upto 200,000 (I know officially it was 80,000, but that is generally considered political BS). A day or so prior to the ... ahem 7.9 (more like 8.4+). there were news reports of a mass exodus of toads from their normal area of habitat. The location of the habitat - as you might have guessed - was close to the epicentre.

I saw the news report, and video of the toads. It only gelled after the quake had hit of course. Prior to the quake, everyone was thinking: "why are they doing such a strange thing?" About 24 hours later, we got the answer.

I think they probably do, its a protection mechanism. Obviously like humans probably they are not right all the time, but they need those senses to survive.

Animal stories of this kind are always fasinating.

Also the reason for domesticating dogs, so humans would not be so paranoid all the time probably.

Apparently no wild land animals died in the Tsunami's, I dont have a source, just heard it on the radio when they were talking about the toads, something to do with the magnetic field. I wonder if humans have similar abilities, but the modern lifestyle has distracted any such ability.

Originally posted by space cadet
reply to post by amatrine

 

You should participate in the 'alternative methods of predicting earthquakes' thread, quite interesting. I know now that I am an earthquake sensitive, I 'feel' things prior to a quake, not only in my area, we have very few here, but anywhere in the world.
And to answer the topic at hand, yes animals of all kinds can sense an earthquake, we need to start listening.

crap it takes me half ways through an earthquake to figure out what the hell is going on

bad news for me

reply to post by mckyle


nǐ hǎo Mckyle Interesting to say the least..

You may have found a use for the millions of pesky cane toads here in Queensland cheap early warning system, Cool we must hook up when you get back home..LOL

Interesting thread GorehoundLarry

you are going to get some great feed back on this topic I'll be following up for sure

Ocker

My dog always seems to know when a thunderstorm is approaching about twenty minutes before it arrives.

Also, there's quite a few farms around here and one good way to tell if a storm is on the way is to see what the cows are doing: if they're all huddled together under a tree, it's time to head inside.

Interesting topic, S&F.


TA

Originally posted by ocker
reply to post by mckyle

 

nǐ hǎo Mckyle Interesting to say the least..

You may have found a use for the millions of pesky cane toads here in Queensland cheap early warning system, Cool we must hook up when you get back home..LOL

Interesting thread GorehoundLarry

you are going to get some great feed back on this topic I'll be following up for sure

Ocker

Hey Ocker - erm, I mean nǐ hǎo

Love to hook up mate. Not sure when I will be back, but will keep you posted as to when I do make a move back to my beloved 'Sunburnt Country'.

It would indeed be good to discover another use (beside their chemical properties) for those wretched, near-indestructible creatures.

I hear the box jellyfish (a clever native - not like the useless and imported Cane Toad) can detect the pre-conditions of cyclonic conditions.



[edit on 3-4-2010 by mckyle]

Originally posted by mckyle

I hear the box jellyfish (a clever native - not like the useless and imported Cane Toad) can detect the pre-conditions of cyclonic conditions.



[edit on 3-4-2010 by mckyle]

We could be the Doolittle (DR harry LOL) and Jacques-Yves Cousteau equilivent in our own rights

LOL

Ocker

Originally posted by ocker

Originally posted by mckyle

I hear the box jellyfish (a clever native - not like the useless and imported Cane Toad) can detect the pre-conditions of cyclonic conditions.



[edit on 3-4-2010 by mckyle]

We could be the Doolittle (DR harry LOL) and Jacques-Yves Cousteau equilivent in our own rights

LOL

Ocker

That sounds like a hell of a lot of fun mate, actually. I'm looking for an old sea-going junk, to buy and make sea-worthy and sail back to Oz (it's in the semi-realistic/semi dream stage). I'd love to just sail around Oz and the islands, diving (whilst avoiding the Box Jellys), and trying out the Jacques Cousteau thing. If you're happy with being Dr. Harry, then you've got a deal :-)

just ware do you think these toads were of to ppl man its a TOAD
immange if you will daddy toad cpmes home from a long day of hunting flys
hops through the door tells his wife get the tads (all 645 of them ) aND RUN
theres a earthquake comming .
so out the door they go hopping like mad 4 days later there a mile down the road .
see the problem here yet? people its not like a toad can book a seat of a plane or bus. now a larger animal maby has a chance a cat dog if they run oo 30 miles a day for 4 days thats 120 miles alest far enough for a normal earthquake of volcanio. but mr toad is tosted.
now you say these toads just up and left ok they have to be withing a mile so were are they .
the real conspire here isent the earthquake but the magic dispiring toads
Of corse mabby they all just croked

Originally posted by woodwardjnr
Apparently no wild land animals died in the Tsunami's, I dont have a source, just heard it on the radio when they were talking about the toads, something to do with the magnetic field. I wonder if humans have similar abilities, but the modern lifestyle has distracted any such ability.

Yep thats why we domesticated dogs. Humans would still be too paranoid, and fearful to live a life if it was not for them, taking over this role.

Amazing what animals can do.

I really do believe that they can. We can even smell rain in the air before the storm is close. I have no idea how they do it but I'm sure they do. Of course with evidence like this, it's clear they have super powers.