Earthquake. What do animals feel? Animals
All kinds of disturbances can make animals behave abnormally. It has been said for a long time that animals can sense earthquakes in advance.
The earliest records date back to 373 B.C., before a major earthquake flattened the Greek city of Helice, many people saw rats, snakes, and ferrets move out of the city. In our country's Tang Dynasty's "Kaiyuan Occupy the Classic? Landscape", there is also a record of "rats gathering in the streets of the imperial court city and singing, and places slaughtering." It can be said that almost every earthquake survivor's recollection has reports of abnormal animal behavior - fish jumping around, chickens not laying eggs, bees not returning to their nests, various pets restless... Indeed, many animals have sensory systems far more sensitive than humans. Vipers can sense infrared rays; elephants and whales can sense infrasound waves; dogs can not only smell, but also hear ultrasound... Many animals, especially burrowing animals, are very sensitive to vibrations, so even if you are tiptoeing, mice can always easily sense your approach and run away.
It is this extreme sensitivity to tremors that makes many animals behave abnormally before an earthquake - because many large earthquakes are preceded by multiple small foreshocks, which startle shock-sensitive animals and cause them to flee in a hurry. In the 1970s, the US Geological Survey conducted several studies on abnormal animal responses and earthquakes, and found "no credible link between the two". Indeed, the abnormal reactions of animals affected by foreshocks can also be caused by other effects - such as weather changes, hunger, and even a nearby truck can cause similar reactions in animals. Readers who have owned pets may have seen their pets lose their temper inexplicably.
So if animals can behave abnormally at any time for various reasons, not just because of earthquakes, how can people predict earthquakes based on one of their anomalies? It is a fact that cannot be ignored that the damage caused by a false earthquake is no less than that of a real earthquake. And, in fact, it is impossible for animals to develop a special set of skills specifically designed to avoid earthquakes. Because for an individual animal - including humans - earthquakes are a very low probability event. As for animals with short lifespans, such as mice, the probability of encountering destructive earthquakes in their lifetime is basically zero. It is extremely wasteful to prepare a complex mechanism for an event with almost zero probability. This is like modern people living in the electrical age who occasionally encounter electric shock accidents, but people don't have to wear heavy insulation clothes every day for this.
Major events cause special psychological effects. If animals can't really predict earthquakes, why have earthquake survivors reported abnormal animal behavior over the years? This is actually a common psychological phenomenon known as the "psychological focusing effect": when people encounter major events such as earthquakes, they tend to recall more clearly what happened before the event. In fact, so-called "anomalies" often happen, but people don't usually observe or remember them. Another common phenomenon is rumors. One rumor is that after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, people hardly found the carcasses of animals because they all avoided in advance. However, Margot Homburg Park, a volunteer at the Phuket Stray Dog Foundation in Thailand, said: "Many dogs are engulfed by the huge waves. I had nine dogs in my yard 500 meters from the sea, and I didn't notice any unusual behavior. My husband felt the earthquake at 8am, but the dogs didn't respond. "In fact, when people are faced with a scene of corpses everywhere, do they still notice the body of a dog?
