2023 Author: Adelina Croftoon | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-24 12:05
Already twenty hours before a strong tremor, cows, sheep and dogs begin to behave more restlessly and anxiously. This was recorded by scientists who observed them for six months
For a long time, there have been tales among the people that animals and birds can anticipate earthquakes. They start acting strange and restless before they happen.
Such stories go back centuries and it is obvious that they were based on something, but only recently have scientists been able to prove that such a thing really exists.
Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Animal Behavior conducted an unusual experiment on a farm with animals, which is located in a seismically active region of Italy.
Several animals - six cows, five sheep and two dogs - were hung with special sensors that monitored the speed of movement of the animals 24 hours a day. Further, the animals began to be monitored and it lasted from October 2016 to April 2017.
During this time, about 18 thousand earthquakes occurred in the region, mostly, of course, very weak ones, which a person can hardly feel. However, some tremors caused the soil to move, including in the place where the farm stood.
When scientists analyzed the behavior of animals on the eve of such strong aftershocks, they found that the animals began to worry about 20 hours or a little less before the start of the strong shock. Their behavior changed, and at the same time for all, and not individually for each.
There are already proposals to create an early warning system for fluctuations of the earth's crust on the basis of such behavior of animals. For example, if animals behave non-standardly and more restlessly than usual for more than 45 minutes, the computer will sound an alarm.
However, how exactly animals feel the impending strong earthquake for as long as 20 hours remains a mystery.
