Posted on 05/15/2008 6:20:33 AM PDT by NYer
A nurse tries to comfort Liu Lu, an 11-year-old girl who survived Monday's powerful 7.9 magnitude quake after her school collapsed in Hanwang, as she cries in pain while receiving medical treatment at a hospital in Deyang, in Sichuan province, China, Thursday, May 15, 2008. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
BEIJING - First, the water level in a pond inexplicably plunged. Then, thousands of toads appeared on streets in a nearby province. Finally, just hours before China's worst earthquake in three decades, animals at a local zoo began acting strangely.
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As bodies are pulled from the wreckage of Monday's quake, Chinese online chat rooms and blogs are buzzing with a question: Why didn't these natural signs alert the government that a disaster was coming?
"If the seismological bureau were professional enough they could have predicted the earthquake ten days earlier, when several thousand cubic meters of water disappeared within an hour in Hubei, but the bureau there dismissed it," one commentator wrote.
In fact, seismologists say, it is nearly impossible to predict when and where an earthquake will strike.
Several countries, including China, have sought to use changes in nature — mostly animal behavior — as an early warning sign. But so far, no reliable way has been found to use animals to predict earthquakes, said Roger Musson, a seismologist with the British Geological Survey.
But that has not stopped a torrent of online discussion. Even the mainstream media has chimed in, with an article in Tuesday's China Daily newspaper questioning why the government did not predict the earthquake.
Online commentators say the first sign came about three weeks ago, when large amounts of water suddenly disappeared from a pond in Enshi city in Hubei province, around 350 miles east of the epicenter, according to media reports.
Then, three days before the earthquake, thousands of toads roamed the streets of Mianzhu, a hard-hit city where at least 2,000 people have been reported killed.
Mianzhu residents feared the toads were a sign of an approaching natural disaster, but a local forestry bureau official said it was normal, the Huaxi Metropolitan newspaper reported May 10, two days before the earthquake.
The day of the earthquake, zebras were banging their heads against a door at the zoo in Wuhan, more than 600 miles east of the epicenter, according to the Wuhan Evening Paper.
Elephants swung their trunks wildly, almost hitting a staff member. The 20 lions and tigers, which normally would be asleep at midday, were walking around. Five minutes before the quake hit, dozens of peacocks started screeching.
There are a few possible reasons for such behavior, said Musson, the seismologist. The most likely is that the movement of underground rocks before an earthquake generates an electrical signal that some animals can perceive. Another theory holds that other animals can sense weak shocks before an earthquake that are imperceptible to humans.
Zhang Xiaodong, a researcher at the China Seismological Bureau, said his agency has used natural activity to predict earthquakes 20 times in the past 20 years, but that still represents a small proportion of China's earthquakes.
"The problem now is this kind of relationship is still quite vague," he said.
In winter 1975, Chinese officials ordered the evacuation of the city of Haicheng in northeastern Liaoning province the day before a 7.3 magnitude earthquake, based on reports of unusual animal behavior and changes in ground water levels. Still, more than 2,000 people died. Strange environmental phenomena including changes in well water levels, were also reported a year later before a 7.6 magnitude earthquake in Tangshan in northeastern China that killed 240,000, Musson said.
A team of Chinese seismologists was sent to the region but didn't find any evidence to suggest an earthquake. As the seismologists were going home, they stopped for the night in Tangshan and were killed in the quake.
I have a friend who is native born Italian. He has often spoken of similar animal behavior in Italy just prior to an earthquake. Your thoughts?
Imperceptible to human senses, perhaps, but not imperceptible to human technology.
I’d believe it. One of my dogs knew when a thunderstorm was coming; she hated them. She’d be under the bed long before the storm showed up on local radar.
I remember a class room here in california that had a fish in an aquarium that would begin swimming on its side 12 hours before a quake.
Either the animals were acting strangely before the quake or they weren’t. There are many stories of animals acting oddly before quakes, and not just from China. And lakes and ponds don’t just drain - unless the ground is opening up underneath them.
It is true, animals that have sensitive foot pads(dogs).
Snakes find their prey by vibrations made from the movement of what they are trying to eat.
They know if it is a large creature(herd) or small like a mouse.
They sense the vibrations of the earth prior to an earthquake and it throws them off.
It is not esp but sensitivity to environment.
Would not suprise me because animals have a much more fine tune sense of detecting movements in the earth.
Also in CA from what I have heard people report in the days and weeks before an earthquake that their pets go missing and put ads and posters up.
All one needs to remember is the tsunami in Thailand......hours before it hit all the animals make their way to the hills.
That humans can detect those signs and use them to good effect is still doubtful.
A single false alarm will cast doubt on the whole idea. If a government evacuates a town because the chickens went crazy, and then nothing happens, the government has lost all credibility on the subject.
Also see hurricane forecasting.
Are the cats and dogs in China acting odd because they sense a natural disaster or is it due to the fact they’re about to become dinner?
If you ever see lots of rats and other animals running full speed somewhere, you better follow them. Something BIG is coming.
This happened during the Tsunami. The animals started running for the hills just before the waves hit.
“Only idiots and liars predict earthquakes.” —Charles Richter
Yes. The Chinese would be better off if they spent less time on animal earthquake prediction and more on reinforcing buildings to prevent loss of life.
A very high percentage of the recent deaths could have been prevented if modern building practices had been in use. There are thousands of building in California and around the world that will fall down with a similar earthquake.
The idiots who want to spend $trillions on Global Warming could save tens of thousands of lives if that money was direct to meaningful proven technologies like seismic building upgrades.
Here is a video taken DURING the quake:
The reports at the time were some elephants, not "all" animals.
I lived in Japan for three years and my neighbor swore his dog anticipated eathquakes hours ahead of time. He’d get jittery and nervous, start whining. I took it with a grain of salt but as the years passed I noticed his dog always DID get whiney and skittish before a quake.
So personally, I think there is something to it. Perhaps they hear the very low frequency sounds of goans and moans of a fault getting ready to snap. I dunno. It is interesting though.
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