Can farm animals predict earthquakes?
German scientist studies livestock in Italy to see if their behavior changes before temblors strike
APIEVE TORINA, Italy fter a series of powerful earthquakes struck Italy last year, Martin Wikelski rushed here to test a hunch that has tantalized scientists and thinkers for millenniums: Can animals anticipate natural disasters?
A German scientist, Wikelski tagged several animals on a farm in Pieve Torina in the Marches region of central Italy in October to monitor their behavior, hoping that if it changed in some consistent way before an earthquake, it could be used as an early warning system and potentially save thousands of lives.
One warm morning this spring, he came back for the findings.
“Wow, it really looks as though something is there,” he said excitedly, watching as his computer crunched the data on the hood of his car in a farmyard jumbled with machinery.
The series of earthquakes in Italy began in August, with other major temblors coming in October and January, accompanied by thousands of aftershocks.
The calamity has cost $26 billion in damage, rendered thousands homeless and caused more than 300 deaths. But the consistent shaking of a largely rural and agricultural area has also provided a rare chance to test the ancient theory.
Wikelski thinks he may be onto something, though he is cautious, and coy, about just how conclusive his data set might be. He is the first to acknowledge that some consider the idea that animals can predict disasters the stuff of old wives’ tales.
“We are the crazy dudes,” Wikelski said with a laugh. “So we have to make absolutely sure that we don’t make any minor glitch in statistical analysis, because people will try to drill holes in the whole thing, and rightly so.”
While Wikelski could not reveal the details of his findings before publication in a scientific journal, he hinted that the data showed animals moving in a consistent way in the hours before the quake.
Wikelski, director of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell, Germany, said some previous research had augured well for the predictive abilities of animals. It included a study that he conducted from 2012-2014 by monitoring goats and sheep on the side of Mount Etna, in Sicily.
“The animals predicted the major volcanic eruptions during these two years between four to six hours before,” he said, adding that eight major eruptions occurred during his study. “At night, the animals woke up and nervously walked around, and in daytime, they moved to a safe area” where high vegetation suggested that it had been spared by previous lava flows.
On the basis of this research, he applied in 2013 for a patent: “Disaster Alert Mediation Using Nature.” The patent is pending. The recurring earthquakes in Marches and other parts of central Italy presented the chance to record a wealth of data about animal responses to further test the theory. “We are really excited because this is the first time we could tag animals before, during and after a major earthquake series,” Wikelski said.
After a devastating earthquake hit the region in October, Wikelski and his project manager, Uschi Muller hurried to Italy. They happened upon the Angeli farm, which sells cheese produced by the family’s sheep and cows and other local delicacies.
The researchers walked into what had been the farm’s shop. “Everything was broken,” Wikelski said. “All the cheese shelves were on the ground. You could see their livelihood was gone,” he said, but the family was “still very nice.”
Wikelski tagged a number of animals on the farm — a rabbit, sheep, cows, turkeys, chickens and dogs — with small but sophisticated sensors.
The devices measured the animals’ every movement, down to the second: their magnetic direction, speed, altitude, temperature, humidity, acceleration and location. He described the tag, powered with a small solar panel, as a “black box full of information.”
A few days after the first animals were tagged, another major earthquake, measuring a magnitude of 6.5, hit the area, which provided data for a significant seismic event.
Wikelski and Muller retrieved the monitoring devices a few weeks later and then returned in January to tag several of the same animals again, including half a dozen cows, twice as many sheep and two dogs, Zeus and Aro. “I think the turkeys were eaten,” Wikelski said. In April, the researchers came again to remove the remaining tags and to study the acquired data.
Tagging different species might be essential, according to Wikelski, as each one senses the environment in a distinct way. And together, he said, they might “form a collective sensing system,” providing completely novel information.
On a global level, such a collective could be described as “the internet of animals,” he said.
“If it’s just one animal alone from one farm, we wouldn’t be able to see a signal, but if you take it all together, the synergies, the synthesis of these sensing systems, that’s really what seems to give the signal,” Wikelski said.