Understanding Animal Detection of Precursor Earthquake Sounds

Scientists and amateur seismologists, particularly in China and Japan, have attempted over hundreds of years to use the behavior of both wild and domestic animals, disturbed by some sensory input well before a major earthquake, as a predictor of that event. The most striking case occurred in 1975, when, in addition to other precursor events, domestic and wild animals in and around the city of Haicheng, China behaved in an extremely anomalous fashion. The city was partially evacuated and many thousands of lives were saved. Re-analysis of these data, however, found it difficult to reconstruct the source, timing and impact of the actual earthquake warnings. Here we provide, for the first time, an explanation of how animals might detect, in advance, the occurrence of an earthquake and why inconsistencies are likely in such a prediction