The animal kingdom is full of wonders, and there’s still so much we have yet to discover. One mystery that has puzzled humans for years is how some animals seem to sense an earthquake or tsunami before it happens.
Here’s what we know so far:
Goats and sheep seen leaving the slopes
When an earthquake or volcanic eruption occurs, there are often reports of wild animals fleeing the area well in advance. Over 3,000 years ago, Chinese scholars firmly believed that animals could predict natural disasters.
By closely observing the behavior of both wild and domestic animals — including fish, reptiles, birds, mammals, and even insects — they claimed to detect warning signs of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. According to their observations, these signs could appear hours, days, or even weeks before disaster struck.
During Mount Etna’s eruptions between 2012 and 2014, as well as the earthquakes in central Italy in 2016 and 2017, researchers observed animals reacting hours before the events occurred.
The researchers found that animals, including cows, sheep, and dogs, exhibited higher-than-normal activity levels in the hours before an earthquake, with those closest to the epicenter reacting earlier.
For example, goats and sheep were seen leaving the slopes of the volcano before an eruption, instinctively seeking areas with dense vegetation — places that tend to be safe from lava flows.
Based on their findings, scientists concluded that animals can detect impending natural disasters at least four to six hours in advance.
Owls and hedgehogs
Kazakh scientists have found that nocturnal animals are able to sense vibrations from an earthquake much earlier than humans. Specifically, animals like hedgehogs and owls, which are active at night, often become active during the day right before an earthquake strikes.
This unusual behavior is seen as a clear indicator that a quake may be imminent. Additionally, animals that live in burrows, such as certain rodents, tend to flee before an earthquake, suggesting they can sense danger well ahead of time.
A particularly striking example of this occurred in 1992, just before a major earthquake in the Illy region of Kyrgyzstan. Reports indicated that all the pigeons in the area had disappeared shortly before the tremor hit, further supporting the theory that animals may be able to sense seismic events before they happen.
In another case, researchers studying an earthquake in Siberia noticed that some dogs became unusually anxious — barking, howling, whining, and running around—anywhere from minutes to hours before the quake hit.
Another study analyzed 729 reports of strange animal behavior leading up to earthquakes. The study covered a wide range of animals, including dogs, cats, birds, cows, elephants, toads, and fish.
Researchers found that most of these behaviors occurred within 24 hours before an earthquake, with a significant number happening in the final hour. Interestingly, nearly 60% of those last-hour incidents took place within the final five minutes.
While the exact cause remains uncertain, it appears that animals react differently just before an earthquake occurs.
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami
During the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, Yala National Park in Sri Lanka, home to elephants, leopards, buffalo, monkeys, and various other wildlife, saw no reported animal casualties — even as massive waves surged more than three kilometers inland. Remarkably, all the park’s residents appeared to have narrowly escaped the devastation.
“I don’t think there’s anything mystical about it. Animals can’t see into the future —they simply react to direct stimuli. But it’s important to remember that animals have different sensory abilities than we do. Wild animals, in particular, have incredibly sharp senses,” said Magnus Enquist, a professor of theoretical ethology — the study of animal behavior — at Stockholm University.
”Elephants and many other animals likely sensed the danger before humans did. They either felt the ground shaking or heard the approaching wave. Elephants, for example, can detect vibrations through their feet, and their bodies act as large resonance chambers. On top of that, they communicate over long distances using infrasound,” Enquist explained.
Infrasound consists of low-frequency sound waves, below 20 hertz, that humans can’t hear. While Enquist believes animals may have sensed danger, he’s skeptical that they instinctively knew exactly what to do.
For Sverre Sjölander, a professor of ethology at Linköping University, the explanation is simple: “Over time, animals that didn’t figure out where to go during a disaster didn’t survive.”
”It’s common for snakes and lizards to emerge from underground before an earthquake. They can detect the small tremors that often precede a major quake,” Sjölander said. He also pointed out that animals observe and react to each other’s behavior. ”If monkeys see elephants getting agitated and running away, they’ll follow suit.”
And when it comes to survival, most large animals can outrun humans. Animals can also detect subtle environmental changes that people miss. For instance, birds respond to slight shifts in air pressure, while migratory birds have an acute ability to sense changes in the Earth’s magnetic field.
Can dog sense an oncoming earthquake?
There have been reports for centuries suggesting that animals, particularly dogs, can sense earthquakes before they occur. In fact, studies have observed unusual behavior in dogs, such as barking, howling, and restlessness, in the minutes to hours leading up to an earthquake.
However, there is skepticism about whether animals can truly predict earthquakes, as humans tend to remember strange behavior more clearly when an earthquake occurs shortly after. One study tried to eliminate this hindsight bias by continuously monitoring farm animals in Italy.
While no definitive scientific evidence proves that dogs can predict earthquakes, many believe that they might be sensing something unusual that we can’t detect. It’s suggested that dogs could be reacting to small, undetectable foreshocks, underground acoustic waves, or even changes in the environment such as air ionization or smells from the earth.
What skeptics are saying
Dr. Stanley Coren’s research showed that dogs’ behavior, such as increased anxiety and activity, may be linked to high-frequency seismic sounds they can hear before humans can. Smaller dogs, especially those with prick ears, appeared to react more to these sounds than larger dogs.
Despite the lack of conclusive evidence, the increasing reports of animal behavior changes before earthquakes suggest that animals might have a unique ability to sense these natural disasters.
This could be due to their heightened senses, allowing them to detect things like vibrations and sounds that humans are unaware of. In the future, animals like dogs could potentially help warn us about impending disasters, offering an additional layer of early detection.
Skeptics of the idea that animals can predict natural disasters point out that there’s little scientific evidence to back the claim that animals sense earthquakes or landslides before detectable physical signs, such as ground vibrations, reach monitoring stations.
They argue that in the few cases considered plausible for earthquake predictions, it’s more likely that animals responded to the actual seismic event itself, which reached observation points faster than more destructive phenomena, like the resulting waves.
What do you think? Could animals have a “sixth sense” and perceive things that we humans can’t? Or is it just something we’ve imagined? Share your thoughts in the comment section.
