Camera traps suggest wild animals anticipated major earthquake weeks before it struck

Paca rodent (Cuniculus-paca). Photo courtesy of the TEAM Network.

A recent study documenting animal behavior by analyzing camera-trap data, suggests that animals may have an uncanny ability to sense and flee from irritating portents of seismic activity.

• Historically, scientists have dismissed accounts of animals acting strangely before earthquakes, mostly due to the anecdotal nature of the accounts and a lack of reliable sources.
• By examining camera-trap photos, researchers were able to observe changes in animal behavior in the time leading up to a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Yanachaga National Park.
• The present study appears to validate a longstanding belief that animals can sense earthquakes coming and that they react more as the earthquakes approach.

Twenty-three days before a major earthquake in 2011 animals began disappearing from part of Yanachaga National Park in Peru. By 24 hours before the quake they had completely vacated the area. A recent study documenting the animals’ retreat with camera-trap data suggests that animals may have an uncanny ability to sense and flee from irritating portents of seismic activity.

Historically, scientists have dismissed accounts of animals acting strangely before earthquakes, mostly due to the anecdotal nature of the accounts and a lack of reliable sources. “[T]he infrequency and unpredictability of earthquakes means that most relevant pre-earthquake studies suffer, of necessity, from small sample sizes and from difficulties with reproducibility under comparable conditions,” states the recent study, published in the journal Physics and Chemistry of the Earth.

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Citations:

Freund, F.T., Kulahci, I.G., Cyr, G., Ling, J., Winnick, M., Tregloan-Reed, J. et al. (2009). Air ionization at rock surfaces & pre-earthquake signals. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 71: 1824-1834.

Grant, R.A., Raulin, J.P., Freund, F.T. (2015). Changes in Animal Activity Prior to a Major (M=7) Earthquake in the Peruvian Andes. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pce. 2015.02.012

Grant, R.A. and Halliday, T. (2010). Predicting the unpredictable; evidence of pre‐seismic anticipatory behaviour in the common toad. Journal of Zoology 281: 263-271.