You may have heard stories from pet owners about their pets acting strangely right before an earthquake, or at least have heard about them in the media. Such incidents have been reported since 373 B.C. in Greece, when rats, weasels and snakes abandoned their dens at the same time and fled in a similar direction.

This past Spring, a dog led an elderly woman away from the tsunami in Japan just before it struck. It actually went off its normal walking route, and up a hill high enough that the woman was protected from the destruction. Her house was engulfed by the water and debris just after she followed the dog up the hill.

In a Chinese city with about one million people officials ordered them to evacuate after noticing sudden, unusual behavior in dogs, an action that saved about 150,000 because an earthquake over 7.0 did occur right after the people left.

A Japanese researcher said dogs and cats detected the Kobe earthquake before it hit the hardest and killed 6,000 people. “Electromagnetic waves are emitted before an earthquake happens. Animals have the ability to detect these electromagnetic waves, “he explained. (Source: Mindpowernews.com)

In Santa Cruz, California a phone survey was conducted to observe how many people had noticed unusual behavior in animals before an earthquake. Unusual behavior was defined for the study as frightened, agitated, excited, disoriented, or missing. Two hundred people were phoned and queried, with 30 saying they had observed unusual animal behavior. About two-thirds of the respondents had pets. In half of the pet owners with dogs, unusual behavior was observed, with 19% of the pet owners observing the same kind of behavior in cats.

Still, science says it has not been proven animals can detect seismic activity before earthquakes hit. It clearly is a very difficult subject to study, because it involves a natural phenomenon that can be deadly both for humans and animals.

Adapted from an article by Jake R.