Head Banging Snakes... Interesting

[Kristy]

Just read this article and thought it was fairly interesting. Thought some of you may like to read it too.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16379707/?GT1=8816

[Mendel's Balls]

Interesting article. I guess we'll see what comes of it. There are reasons to be skeptical though. First, LiveScience lists "Animals can predict Natural Diasters" as one of the most popular myths in science.

The reason why LiveScience labels this as a myth, you ask?

The chinese have experimented with animal based prediction in the past.

From the link in that article titled "Can animals predict the next Big one?"

• "Animal sixth sense: The idea that animals can sense tremors in advance is as old as the ancient Greeks of 373 B.C. and as new as the Asian tsunami of 2004. Orey, for example, suspects a tremor could be on the way when her dog Simon or her cat Kerouac gets unusually jumpy or clingy. Other pets may get the urge to run away. Berkland, too, believes that animals may provide short-term warning of earthquakes and has tabulated the number of lost-pet ads in newspaper classifieds in an attempt to narrow down the area where California earthquakes might hit. The critter connection also has been the subject of research by the Chinese, and even the USGS looked into it for a while in the 1970s. For instance, the 1975 evacuation of Haicheng in China, just hours before a major earthquake, is often cited as a success story for animal prediction. However, China's animal-alarm system has also missed the mark badly — with the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, which killed more than 242,000 people, cited as the most devastating failure."

I'm not sure if they tried to use snakes before. Furthermore, whatever system they had in the past wasnt linked to a real-time Board-band Internet monitoring system as described in the Kristy's article.

I hope it works out--My brother lives in a earthquake prone area and I'd feel much better if he and other Southern Californians could recieve a warning on the wheather channel, etc. I like that the Chinese are not giving up on their plans. Perserverance is key in science and success often comes with 99% failure.

Finally, I also hope those geologists that think short-term Earthquake predicition is impossible are wrong.

[Kristy]

I have heard all sorts of stories from family and friends that live in earthquake prone areas about their animals acting really strange prior to earthquakes, but the animals are also mammals. I am not sure How different their sensitivity is to earthquakes compared to reptiles.

But if they could prove that these snakes or other snakes could possibly predict an earthquake that early it would make a world of difference for those that live in earthquake prone areas.

Earthquakes and other natural disaters make me feel so fortunate to live in North Idaho. Although we are not at major risk there is still some. There is a dormant fault line here, Mt. St Helens, Mt. Ranier and Yellowstone. Mt St. Helens being the biggest threat to my area.

[Rascal]

I heard that before the 2004 tsunami that many of the animals ran up into the hills.
Another story was that an elephant came and picked this lady up and took her to high ground right before it happened.

It may just be hersay, but personally I believe animals can sometimes feel some change in their environments to predict disasters. Changes in earths electromagnetic fields are created sometimes before/during/ and after disasters.

But sometimes people make connections only because a significant event happened.
"oh my dog ran away" "my bird was freaking out" it must have known...
Well... sometimes they just do that. Its hard to tell whats going on in their minds!

[Kristy]

Yeah I just heard that about the 2004 tsunami. I watched it on "When animals talk" with Jane Goodall. If you haven't seen that show on animal planet I highly recommend watching it. Its very interesting.