Sensing Quakes

Why animals know in advance

On May 6, 1976, animals in the Friuli region of northeastern Italy inexplicably went berserk. Dogs began barking and howling, cats ran into the streets, and hens refused to roost. Mice and rats scurried out of their hiding places and ran in circles. Horses and cows fidgeted in their stalls. Pet birds flapped their wings and emitted agonizing calls, almost as if they sensed what was about to occur. At 9 o'clock that night, the Friuli area was jolted by a major earthquake.

Farmers and other country folk who live in seismically active areas have long insisted that animals often act strangely before a quake. Scientists' traditional skepticism about these reports has begun to erode, partly as a result of the work of China's "barefoot seismologists." These field workers have used observations of every kind--including changes in the level, temperature, color and smell of well water, and even the behavior of pandas in zoos--to make successful predictions of impending temblors.

Now a researcher thinks he can explain how animals anticipate quakes. Writing in Nature, Biochemist Helmut Tributsch of the Max Planck Society's Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin says that animals can apparently sense, quite literally, that a quake is in the air. His theory: before the major shock hits, the earth releases such great masses of charged particles, or ions, that the atmosphere is almost alive with electricity. Such electrostatic activity, while discomforting enough to humans (it can cause headaches, irritability and nausea), may be more irritating to the delicate senses of many animals.

Tributsch acknowledges that his theory is based largely on old or inexact observations. The ancient Greeks and Romans regarded fogs, strange clouds and eerie lights as precursors of earthquakes. These atmospheric phenomena, suggests Tributsch, may have been of an electrical nature. Indeed, a 1976 U.S. Geological Survey conference on animal behavior prior to earthquakes concluded that the body of such casual evidence is too large to ignore. In addition, a number of researchers have found that positive ions can have marked physiological effects on people and animals by stimulating the production of serotonin, a neurohormone that plays a role in the transmission of nervous impulses, mood responses and gastric secretions.

In any event, Tributsch has a personal reason for doing further research into the matter: the Friuli area, which lies in an active quake region, is the scientist's birthplace.

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