Your pets can’t predict earthquakes

For centuries people have claimed that strange behaviour by their dogs and cats can predict an imminent earthquake, but the first rigorous analysis of the phenomenon shows that there is no strong evidence behind it.

A study published in the journal Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America suggests that most of this “evidence” consists of single observations and anecdotes that cannot be tested rigorously.

“Many review papers on the potential of animals as earthquake precursors exist, but to the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a statistical approach was used to evaluate the data,” said Heiko Woith from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences. The researchers collected reports on potential earthquake predictions across a variety of animals, from elephants to silkworms.

Most reports were anecdotes rather than experimental studies, and the majority of the reports came from three events: the 2010 Darfield earthquake in New Zealand, the 1984 Naganoken Seibu earthquake in Japan, and the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake in Italy.

Only 14 of the reports record a series of observations of the animals over time — most reports are single observations, researchers said. These weaknesses in the data make it difficult to confirm that these behaviours are predictive — meaning they signal an earthquake event before the event begins - rather than random occurrences or behaviours linked to the initial stages of an earthquake, such as foreshocks, they said.