Animals and Earthquakes

A pet dog has been credited with anticipating the earthquake that hit parts of the UK last week (it reached 5.2 on the Richter scale and was the biggest for 25 years). Wendy Brooks from Mablethorpe, a town at the epicentre in Lincolnshire, says one of her five pet Boxers started acting strangely several hours before the quake struck, pacing up and down, panting and looking nervous. 'She kept getting up and glancing behind her as if something was there and then she'd look up at the ceiling and cower down in fear.' After the quake the dog went back to normal.

Brooks assumes the dog is psychic, as I think the reporter does. Does that follow, though? I grew up with the idea that animals predict earthquakes, that even some hours before a quake hits cattle start getting twitchy, dogs bark and cower under tables, and so on. But I never thought of it in terms of psychism - I just assumed that since animals' senses are so much stronger than ours in many ways they could feel tiny earth tremors before humans.  Other ideas apparently are that they can they can sense electrical changes in the air or gas released from the Earth.

But if one of the five dogs displayed the abnormal behaviour it might suggest that we are dealing with some exceptional quality, and not something that is generally shared by all animals. Just like psychism in humans. And in animals too, for that matter: unlike Rupert Sheldrake's telepathic dog, my Staffordshire terrier never knows when I'm coming home until I'm within ten feet of him.

That doesn't mean it is psychism. But it's hard to avoid the conclusion that there is a link between earthquakes and abnormal animal behaviour: the anecdotal evidence is persistent. You can find any number of stories about elephants and other animals fleeing to the hills before the Asian tsunami - one bunch of villagers owe their lives to the fact that they were chasing after the stampeding buffalo, who took them to higher ground. (We might surmise, in view of what I've just mentioned, that only some of the animals sense the coming catastrophe, and communicate their fear to the others).

So I never realised the phenomenon was controversial. But apparently in some scientific circles that's the case. Here's statement on the subject from The US Geological Survey:

Changes in animal behaviour can not be used to predict earthquakes. Even though there have been documented cases of unusual animal behaviour prior to earthquakes, a reproducible connection between a specific behavior and and the occurrence of an earthquake has not been made. Animals change their behavior for many reasons and given that an earthquake can shake millions of people, it is likely that a few of their pets will, by chance, be acting strangely before an earthquake.

Where have I heard this idea before? Oh yes, to explain the idea that people experience telepathic connections with other people or have precognitive dreams. I can think of at least one reason why a reproducible connection has not been made, the same as with reports of poltergeists or apparitions: you can't predict when the activity is going to happen. Yet the rational mind can always find ways to suppress what it can't definitively prove, and set aside widely reported experience as so much gossip and folklore.

Comments

[Mark]

This is the problem with replicability. If that's even a word. You can't always replicate the results of experiments. Unless someone figures out a solution to this problem and foists it onto the scientific community, the skeptics (or sceptics, whichever you prefer) will keep using this bogus hammer against anyone who even thinks that there might be the possibility of truth behind any paranormal phenomena.

[Dean]

Problem is, replicability IS, as you say, completely bogus. One can't replicate results always in physics or chemistry, let alone in a field that deals with human (or in this case, animal) performance. What's scarier: accepting PSI, or throwing all the sciences out including PSI??? The current stance of the skeptics is highly hypocritical.

[Dean]

I would also like to add that this is a wonderful blog. The posts are well-written, clear, and thought-provoking. Well done!

[Kato]

If the previous post was by Dean Radin,I would like to thank you for the great scientific input you are providing with your research into these matters.
As an amatuer(for the love of)researcher into PSI and the afterlife(whatever that may be)since 1984,there does seem a gulf between laboratory results and the PSI experiences that have been documented in the archives by first class minds for over a century,
Even taking misinterpretation,cues,fraud and ignorance of the scientific method into account do you still think subjective experience has a role to play outside of the laboratory as QM seems to have eroded the gap between subject and object.

Keith.

[Dean]

Just to be clear, this Dean is not unfortunately Radin :)

[Kato]

Sorry Dean, I assumed Dr. Radin had dropped in for a chat after Stephen Braude was praising this blog!

[Topher Cooper]

For what it is worth, Dean Radin's own blog now links to this one under "Some Recommended Sites", so he is aware of it and probably reads it at least sometimes.

[Eva]

If you think about it, there could be an issue of how an animal responds to the stimuli it does recognize. Let's say all dogs sense something (whatever it might be and however they might do it) that comes before an earthquake. So maybe this thing happens hours before the quake. How does the dog respond? Maybe there are some behavioral changes but you are not around or the changes are not clear enough for you to notice. Or maybe the dog just sits there quietly and worries and shows little on the outside. Or maybe the dog does not understand the stimuli is an indicator of something dangerous and so gets used to it and forgets about it. Maybe a dog that lives through a small quake or two after a while will no longer be so afraid of quakes and so will no longer respond to prequake stimuli. There are so many variables and things we dont' know, it would seem to me this would not be a good place to start when it comes to attempting to gather evidence for psi.

However, if they were to do it, I would suggest they gather animals that seem to respond a lot (birds?) and then they would have to monitor them and film them 24/7, probably best in an earthquake prone area, and then attempt to find specific changes in behavior before quakes. Once specific changes were potentially identified, they would then need to monitor and attempt to make predictions based on the behavior. log the predictions in advance, and then see how many predictions turned out to be accurate. The ability to predict earthquakes in advance, even if only by 50% accuracy, might still be enough to garner some media attention. But even if the project succeeded, that would not by itself be evidence of psi specifically, only that they can do/sense something out of range of standard human senses. Still would be neat though!

[Topher Cooper]

Check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_prediction

Basically, while there is some evidence that animals sometimes sense an upcoming earthquake attempts to use this for prediction (including a massive, multi-year project in China) just haven't been very successful. Animal reactions are just too irregular to work well except in retrospect. In fact, the one big success of the Chinese effort could probably have been predicted with seismic instruments alone -- there were a number of quite detectable foreshocks.