How do animals sense an earthquake before it happens?

Question

Dogs barking, horses getting restless etc?

I experienced it whilst on Holiday in Italy when there was regular earth tremours. Dogs would consistenly bark and howl before they occured. How do they know or what spooks them?

Answer 1

My best guess is that animals can hear or feel any infrasonic noises that come from the earth's crust.

Answer 2

'In 373 B.C., historians recorded that animals, including rats, snakes and weasels, deserted the Greek city of Helice in droves just days before a quake devastated the place.

Accounts of similar animal anticipation of earthquakes have surfaced across the centuries since. Catfish moving violently, chickens that stop laying eggs and bees leaving their hive in a panic have been reported. Countless pet owners claimed to have witnessed their cats and dogs acting strangely before the ground shook—barking or whining for no apparent reason, or showing signs of nervousness and restlessness.  

One theory is that wild and domestic creatures feel the Earth vibrate before humans. Other ideas suggest they detect electrical changes in the air or gas released from the Earth.

Earthquakes are a sudden phenomenon. Seismologists have no way of knowing exactly when or where the next one will hit. An estimated 500,000 detectable quakes occur in the world each year. Of those, 100,000 can be felt by humans, and 100 cause damage. '

Hope this helped! :)

Answer 3

Scientists believe that Cockroaches can predict earthquakes.  There have been studies on this.  I do not know the findings of such research.

I did a TV film on that exact thing for Ripley's Believe It Or Not  many years ago.

Answer 4

They are sensitive to the change in the Earth's magnetic field just before a quake.

Some guy in Japan predicts earthquakes by monitoring the number of runaway / lost dogs and cats in the newspapers.

Answer 5

animals r sensitive to the little vibrations and sounds that r produced by earthquakes which r not audible by humans

thus they KNOW when theres gonna be a earthquake.

Answer 6

Hear a site http://science.howstuffworks.com/pet-six...

Answer 7

They don't, at least not with enough reliability to be better than geologist.   We humans have far greater ability to "sense" earthquakes than any animal.

"The trouble with animal reactions is that they are not reliable...."

http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/ASK/NewMa...

Can Animals Sense Earthquakes?http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...

Answer 8

Dogs and other animals can hear vibrations that are not in the spectrum that humans hear.  Call it magnetic or whatever, that is what the animals react to, unusual vibrations that they hear/feel.

Answer 9

They have super powers :)

Most animals have much better scenes than humans do so they can feel something like an earthquake before you can.