Every time an earthquake occurs, such as the recent Japan, we hear stories about animals that hours before the quake behaved oddly. Are many cases of dogs and cats that were nervous or irritable shortly before the tremors or birds fly away from areas where after these natural disasters occurred.
Most of these behaviors "predictive" of animals are often transmitted by word of mouth stories, but few studies have empirically demonstrated this ability of animals to anticipate changing their behavior earthquakes.
few months ago published an article in the Journal of Zoology, signed by Rachel Grant and Tim Hallyday, which showed a population of common toads (Bufo bufo ) who lived near the area of \u200b\u200bL 'Aquila in Italy, showed dramatic changes in reproductive behavior from 5 days prior to the occurrence the earthquake that struck central Italy in April 2009 .
Rachel Grant was studying the reproduction of frogs at Lake San Rufino, 75 km from the epicenter of the earthquake. Generally, in late March began Reproduction of this species. The number of males was increasing day by day until reaching the peaks of occurrence during the next full moon. The number of breeding pairs was also growing, becoming more frequent rainy days and high humidity. That year, all was normal until no apparent reason the number of toads present at spawning sites plummeted to 96% of the specimens disappeared from one day to another. This behavior was very strange because the common toads once they started playing remained active and in large numbers until all females had spawned. Five days
after the disappearance of frogs earthquake took place, and it was not until a few days when amphibians reappeared, though in smaller numbers than previous years. Some researchers had suggested that the animals were able to sense the P wave several minutes before an earthquake strikes, but in this case the frogs changed their behavior 5 days before, so that it seemed that that was the explanation. Posteriors studies seemed to indicate that the toads in the area of \u200b\u200bL'Aquila had been able to detect disturbances in the ionosphere that there had been a few days before, including the release of radon gas that had altered conductivity of the atmosphere by changing electric fields and currents. However, and as discussed these researchers, these hypotheses are difficult to test because we are not yet able, with all our technology to predict earthquakes in advance. References
Grant, R., & Halliday, T. (2010). Predicting the unpredictable; Evidence of pre-seismic anticipatory Behaviour in the common toad Journal of Zoology DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7998.2010.00700.x
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