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Created with Fabric.js 1.4.5 Did You KnowAnimals Can Predict Future Disasters? "Now, some are claiming that oarfish washing ashore is a sign that an earthquake will soon follow. Shortly before the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, about 20 oarfish stranded themselves on beaches."Mark Benfield, a researcher at Louisiana State University, told LiveScience in an earlier interview. "An elephant trumpets wildly, breaks a chain holding it to a tree, and flees to higher ground just before a massive tsunami crashes ashore, drowning hundreds of thousands of people." Scientists at a marine laboratory in Florida found that the sharks they were tracking went down into deeper water the day before Hurricane Charley happened in 2004. Connor Maloy In March 2010, The Journal of Zoology discussed 2 behavioral biologists, Rachel Grant and Tim Halliday who can document that animals have the ability to predict foreboding danger from nature. In Italy, April 2009, there were a large number of toads who left their breeding area 5 days prior to a 6.8 magnitude earthquake. "The most curious finding is that the birds left long before the storm arrived," said Streby. "At the same time that meteorologists on The Weather Channel were telling us this storm was headed in our direction, the birds were apparently already packing their bags and evacuating the area." Hurricanes sound waves that are a frequency too low for us to hear. Animals can hear them because they have better hearing. They might respond to these sound waves as a warning of a storm. Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell, a hearing expert at Stanford University in California, is featured in the program. She told JS that elephants focus on the ground before a seismic (caused by an earthquake) tremor. "[They] can tell the difference between vibrations caused by other elephants and an earthquake." she says. Understanding more about animals' sensitivity to environmental conditions, researchers hope, may help save human lives. One famous instance is recorded in the history of Helike, an ancient Greek city. During the winter of 373 B.C., "all the mice and martens and snakes and centipedes and beetles and every other creature of that kind in the city left," wrote the Roman author Aelianus. "After these creatures had departed, an earthquake occurred in the night; the city subsided; an immense wave flooded and Helike disappeared." On December 26, 2004, in Bang Koey, Thailand the people saw a herd of buffalo grazing on the beach. The buffalo suddenly lifted their heads, poked their ears up, and turned to look at the sea. Then they stampeded off to a hill nearby. Some of the villagers followed the buffalo. Shortly after that a tsumani struck and those villagers were saved. Motoji Ikeya, a quantum geophysicist thinks he has a theory about animals and how certain ones react to changes in electrical currents in the water. Catfish have shown to be the most sensitive to these changes, so he monitors them regularly. Hopefully, they will be able to warn of coming disasters.
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