Researchers Think Animals Might Be Able to Predict Earthquakes!

Amaze Lab

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour fitted animals with motion sensors to investigate whether they could be an early warning system for earthquakes.

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00:00 Animals may have a sixth sense and no, they don't see dead people, but it may help them

00:09 sense when earthquakes will strike.

00:11 An international research team placed sensors on six cows, five sheep and two dogs on a

00:17 farm in Italy in an earthquake-prone area.

00:19 They studied their movement over several months and found they were unusually restless up

00:24 to 20 hours before earthquakes.

00:27 Animals closer to the quakes at the center started behaving unusually earlier than those

00:31 that weren't.

00:32 Though the team says it's still unclear how their sixth sense works, they have a few ideas.

00:38 Researchers think they may be able to sense earthquakes by picking up the air's ionization

00:43 caused by large rock pressures in earthquake zones with their fur.

00:47 Or it's possible animals can smell gases released from quartz crystals before an earthquake.

00:52 Today, predicting when and where earthquakes will happen is still a challenge.

00:56 But researchers say studying a big number of animals in different regions around the

01:00 world could provide further clues.

01:02 The study was published in the Ethology International Journal of Behavioral Biology.

01:07 [MUSIC PLAYING]

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