Can Animals Predict Earthquakes?

On the morning of April 15, 1983, Fairbanks experienced a modest magnitude 5.0 earthquake at 8:31 which would have caused but minor irritation to residents of the area, had it not been for widely reported instances of spilled coffee and toppled vases and liquor bottles. Some minor structural damage, such as cracks in sheetrock joints were reported, but evidence of major damage to buildings or facilities resulting from the earthquake has not been identified.

But that is not the point of this article. What is significant is that the Geophysical Institute received a number of reports of abnormal animal behavior occurring up to half-an-hour before the earthquake occurred.

Speculation among scientists concerning the subject of animal awareness of impending, potentially disastrous geophysical events has long been a subject of controversy. Almost without exception, it has been scoffed at by American scientists.

But the fact is that, following Fairbanks' April 15 earthquake, many people called in to the Geophysical Institute to report that their pets or barnyard animals had been acting peculiarly. Since the establishment of the University of Alaska's seismographic network in 1967, this is the first local instance of so many reports being made of the same phenomenon, although the area has undergone many earthquakes during the time interval. Such behavior has been widely reported elsewhere in the world (particularly in the Orient) and it appears that it is time that Western scientists began to take the matter seriously.

More and more, the evidence is accumulating that certain creatures--migrating birds, waterfowl, dolphins and even bees--have a built-in compass composed of a mineral called magnetite in their head which permits them to navigate, even if they don't always know where they're supposed to be going. Instincts, which humans can only dimly comprehend, take care of that.

Which brings us back to the original point: Is it possible that animals can sense when an earthquake is impending in an area? A possible (and very speculative) interpretation is that when the rocks in a potential earthquake zone are stressed to almost the breaking point, the magnetic minerals in the bedrock are slightly realigned, changing the direction of the local magnetic field.

Perhaps the animals sense this with their built-in compasses. Perhaps they don't. Nobody knows for sure.