When animals sense disaster

Marrakech, Friday evening, shortly before the devastating earthquake in Morocco. Around 11 p.m., Rea Christ Belali notices that her dog Liza is getting nervous. “Like I said, for no reason,” she reported to Watson. Liza barks and cannot be calmed down at all.

Shortly afterwards the earth shook in Morocco. The epicenter is located about 70 kilometers southwest of Marrakesh. Thousands of dead and even more injured were rescued in the hours and days that followed. The country is in a state of shock.

Belali experiences the moment of the earthquake firsthand:

Belali, who has been living in a new apartment complex in Marrakech for a year, immediately discovered more on the internet. Shortly afterwards the electricity and water supplies fail. She takes to the streets to get an idea of ​​the situation.

She watches as people run from their homes screaming. “The situation was unclear.” She heard from neighbors and friends that houses in the old town had been damaged and that people had been killed.

On Saturday morning, dog Liza seems to feel an aftershock and shows off before Belali realizes what is happening.

But can dogs really detect earthquakes before humans notice them? And if so, can animals help provide early warning of such disasters? Martin Wikelski, director of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Biology in Radolfzell, is investigating exactly that.

Whether animals are actually more likely to sense danger is a matter of debate in science. There are many anecdotal stories of wild and domesticated animals changing their behavior in the short term before an earthquake. However, this often does not withstand scientific research, writes the Max Planck Society.

A collaborative project between the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Biology in Radolfzell/Konstanz and the Cluster of Excellence Center for the Advanced Study of Collective Behavior at the University of Konstanz should provide clarity in this regard. To do this, in 2016 and 2017, researchers equipped cows, sheep and dogs with sensors in an Italian earthquake zone and recorded the animals’ behavior over several months.

During this period, more than 18,000 smaller earthquakes and twelve earthquakes with a magnitude of at least 4 on the Richter scale occurred.

And what’s more, the result of the study published in 2020 says that “striking behavioral patterns” were discovered in the animals up to 20 hours before an earthquake, as the Max Planck Society writes. If the animals were closer to the epicenter, they were more likely to change their behavior. However, the effects can only be observed at the collective level, that is, when all animals are viewed together. Predictions have not yet been made reliably for individual animals.

It is not entirely clear how animals could detect earthquakes in advance. As the Max Planck Society writes, one possible explanation is that the animals smell gases released from quartz crystals before the earthquake. Another explanation is that the animals could sense a change in the air through their fur, caused by rock pressure in earthquake areas.

The Max Planck Society also explains what an earthquake early warning system that works based on unusual animal behavior could look like: using collars that collect real-time animal movement data and send it to a central system every three minutes. If a collective increase in activity is detected over 45 minutes, a warning signal is activated.

This worked once and a small earthquake was detected three hours in advance. The epicenter was directly underneath the stable, study author Wikelski explained to the Max Planck Society. However, animal alert systems are still in their early stagesIt goes on to say that much more data is needed from a greater number and variety of animals.

The Icarus project aims to change that. This is a large-scale international collaboration to observe animals. The animals are observed from space. The aim of the project is not only to predict natural disasters, but also to acquire more extensive knowledge about the behavior and migration routes of animals.

For this purpose, various animal species are equipped with mini transmitters; the data is first sent to a receiving station in space and from there to a ground station. After the project was halted due to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, it will now continue without Russia.

(with material from sda)