Re: Can animals and insects predict if there is an earthquake?

Dear Tim,

I would certainly not rely upon animals and insects to predict earthquakes. There are many accounts of animals acting strangely minutes to days before a large earthquake, however, many large earthquakes occur without any reports of strange animal behavior. If you think about it, animals can often act strangely without any earthquake occurring, too. In addition, the earth has over 1 million earthquakes every year - I think we would be hearing about animals acting strangely on a pretty regular basis if this was a real phenomenon! Maybe California would be the perfect place to do a scientific study of animal and insect behavior related to earthquakes just to be sure.

I think we can agree that what humans need is a very reliable way to predict earthquakes. So far, seismologists have no reliable way to predict exactly where, when and how big an earthquake will be. Why is this? Because there are many types and causes of earthquakes that are not fully understood. For instance, sometimes large earthquakes are preceded by many small earthquakes (a swarm) that can be detected by seismometers; sometimes large earthquakes occur with no warning at all. Seismologists are very busy studying HOW and WHY earthquakes happen. Once they know the HOW and WHY, we will be able to tell WHEN, WHERE and HOW BIG.

Thank you for your question!