Earthquake Prediction by Animals: Evolution and Sensory Perception

Abstract

Animals living within seismically active regions are subjected episodically to intense ground shaking that can kill individuals through burrow collapse, egg destruction, and tsunami action. Although anecdotal and retrospective reports of animal behavior suggest that although many organisms may be able to detect an impending seismic event, no plausible scenario has been presented yet through which accounts for the evolution of such behaviors. The evolutionary mechanism of exaptation can do this in a two-step process. The first step is to evolve a vibrationtriggered early warning response which would act in the short time interval between the arrival of P and S waves. Anecdotal evidence suggests this response already exists. Then if precursory stimuli also exist, similar evolutionary processes can link an animal's perception of these stimuli to its P-wave triggered response, yielding an earthquake predictive behavior. A population-genetic model indicates that such a seismic-escape response system can be maintained against random mutations as a result of episodic selection that operates with time scales comparable to that of strong seismic events. Hence, additional understanding of possible earthquake precursors that are presently outside the realm of seismology might be gleaned from the study of animal behavior, sensory physiology, and genetics. A brief review of possible seismic precursors suggests that tilt, hygroreception (humidity), electric, and magnetic sensory systems in animals could be linked into a seismic escape behavioral system. Several testable predictions of this analysis are discussed, and it is recommended that additional magnetic, electrical, tilt, and hygro-sensors be incorporated into dense monitoring networks in seismically active regions.

Lizards respond to an extremely low-frequency electromagnetic field

“…Transparent caps may also serve as a useful control for stress to reconfirm the effect during daytime hours. Kirschvink (Kirschvink, 2000) proposed that a magnetite-based magnetoreception mechanism would be capable of detecting the magnetic anomalies associated with earthquakes. However, there have been no reports of magnetite in the pineal complex of reptiles or amphibians (i.e.…”

“…Non-migratory animals such as mice (Mather and Baker, 1981) and rats (Burda et al, 1990) also reportedly have magnetic sense, but studying sensitivity to electromagnetic field (EMF) in such species is difficult because the approaches used -such as attempting to train them to exhibit a magnetic orientation -are extremely time-consuming and often unsuccessful because of the difficulty in motivating the animals, etc. Because a variety of animals are reported to show changes in behavior in advance of major earthquakes (Kirschvink, 2000;Li et al, 2009;Yokoi et al, 2003), high sensitivity to ultra low-frequency (ULF) or extremely low-frequency (ELF)-EMF signals that often precede major earthquakes has been suggested as a possible basis for these responses. The thresholds of sensitivity to changes in the geomagnetic field are reported to be in the range of 10-200nT (Walker et al, 2002) and magnetoreception mechanisms involving magnetite are sensitive to ELF-EMFs up to Ϸ10Hz (Kirschvink, 2000).…”

“…Because a variety of animals are reported to show changes in behavior in advance of major earthquakes (Kirschvink, 2000;Li et al, 2009;Yokoi et al, 2003), high sensitivity to ultra low-frequency (ULF) or extremely low-frequency (ELF)-EMF signals that often precede major earthquakes has been suggested as a possible basis for these responses. The thresholds of sensitivity to changes in the geomagnetic field are reported to be in the range of 10-200nT (Walker et al, 2002) and magnetoreception mechanisms involving magnetite are sensitive to ELF-EMFs up to Ϸ10Hz (Kirschvink, 2000). ULF-and ELF-EMF signals that precede large earthquakes may be as high as 0.1nT to a few tens of nanotesla within a 60-100km radius of the epicenter (Hayakawa et al, 2007;Kirschvink, 2000).…”

“…The thresholds of sensitivity to changes in the geomagnetic field are reported to be in the range of 10-200nT (Walker et al, 2002) and magnetoreception mechanisms involving magnetite are sensitive to ELF-EMFs up to Ϸ10Hz (Kirschvink, 2000). ULF-and ELF-EMF signals that precede large earthquakes may be as high as 0.1nT to a few tens of nanotesla within a 60-100km radius of the epicenter (Hayakawa et al, 2007;Kirschvink, 2000). Behavioral changes in response to ELF-EMFs provide a novel approach for studying sensitivity to EMFs in animals that are not well suited for use in assays involving (migratory or non-migratory) orientation behavior.…”

Understanding Snake Bite Cases Pattern Related to Volcano-Seismic Activity: An Evidence in Bondowoso, Indonesia

“…The most unusual behavior was shown by the snakes that escaped from their haunt and froze on the ground surface. Tributsch [5], Ikeya et al [6], and Kirschvink [7], mentioned that snakes would start to be panic, and showing some abnormal behavior that could not be explained when they recognize pre disaster signals.…”