• Question: Is it true that animals such as elephants can detect tsunamis and earthquakes?

    Asked by avrilking to Cathal, Ciara, Emma, Michael, Sive on 14 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Sive Finlay

      Sive Finlay answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      Hi Avril,
      Yes! Elephants have a very well developed sense of hearing but it’s not all thanks to their big ears (which are important to help them to regulate their body temperature). Elephants often communicate using infrasound – sounds at low frequencies which we can’t hear. They produce very low rumblings which travel long distances through both the air and the ground. To listen to these sounds, elephants use their feet! They can feel sound vibrations through the ground and sometimes even stand on 3 legs so they can hear better (lifting one leg puts more weight on the remaining 3 legs so they have a better connection with the ground and can pick up sounds better).
      The tectonic shifts in the Earth’s crust which cause tsunamis and earthquakes produce shockwaves which travel through the ground. Sometimes shockwaves with smaller magnitudes are released before the big ones that cause the main earthquake or tsunami. Elephants are good at hearing through the ground so they can feel these tremors often before the main disaster has hit!
      Sive

    • Photo: Michael Nolan

      Michael Nolan answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      Hi Avril,

      my first thought is no. There have been written descriptions of animals fleeing before earthquakes/volcanoes and the like, but there are probably only few such recorded. In the vast majority of earthquakes/volcanoes the animals suffer as well.
      There have been no studies that show any link between animal behaviour and earthquakes. In fact it is near impossible to predict where and when an earthquake will happen (volcanoes appear to build up before eruptions, so maybe there we could have some possibilities) so when it does happen we all get caught out. Apart from elephants as Sive nicely describes, I doubt there are other animals.

      Having said that, the amount of stories about this idea makes it worth testing – so you have to design and experiment to test animal behaviour in this situation versus a control situation. The hypothesis is that animals can detect earthquakes and the experimenta is designed to test it. That is good science.

      That I have one view on this and another person has another view that is different is good – a lack of consensus is also part of science and can drive us to look at these questions.

      Thanks for that good question!

      M

    • Photo: Emma Cahill

      Emma Cahill answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      Hey all, nice answers. In my opinion I wouldnt be suprised if yes, like Sive said, animals such as elephants have very different communication and detection systems than our own. Sive, can we call what rabbits do with their feet infrasonic communication then??
      One that really suprises me still, and I have yet to hear a good explanation, is that dogs can sense epileptic fits. Epilepsy is a brain disorder where the electrical activity of the brain gets briefly out of control and the person usually looses consciousness. The danger is that people can fall and hurt themselves. A number of patients get dogs, and after long periods of time these dogs will come and prevent the owner falling even before the epileptic fit starts!

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