Do animals sense disasters before humans? science behind the folklore
In an Indian village, a change in the behaviour of ants can mean more than it appears. Before heavy rain, people have long watched ants carry eggs and larvae towards higher ground. Frogs become louder, birds alter their movement, and snakes sometimes leave their hiding places.
Such observations have travelled through generations as folklore, but there is a scientific question underneath them: are animals actually sensing changes before humans can?Scientists say animals do not predict earthquakes, cyclones or floods in the human sense. Instead, their bodies can detect physical signals that people cannot easily hear or feel.
Across many parts of India, ants are among the animals closely observed before heavy rain. Their colonies are buried in the environment, and changes in soil moisture, humidity and temperature can alter conditions inside a nest. Moving eggs or larvae may be a response to environmental change rather than an act of prediction.
The question becomes more striking during earthquakes. For centuries, people have reported dogs barking, snakes emerging, birds taking flight and livestock becoming restless before tremors, particularly across the seismically active Himalayas and Northeast.
A possible explanation is that an earthquake sends different waves through the Earth. P-waves travel faster than the more destructive S-waves. Animals capable of detecting subtle ground vibrations may register early movements before humans feel the main shaking.
Elephants can detect low-frequency vibrations through their feet, while snakes are highly sensitive to vibrations travelling through the ground. However, the US Geological Survey notes that while unusual animal behaviour has been reported before earthquakes for centuries, scientists have not established a consistent pattern that can reliably predict when an earthquake will occur.
That distinction became important after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. On December 26, 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Indonesia generated waves that killed at least 225,000 people.
In the minutes before waves reached shore, eyewitness accounts described elephants moving towards higher ground, flamingos abandoning low-lying nesting areas and dogs refusing to go outdoors. In Thailand’s Bang Koey village, residents reportedly saw buffaloes turn towards the sea before running uphill.
Scientists caution that such accounts cannot establish that animals predicted the tsunami, but demonstrate they may have responded to environmental signals associated with the earthquake.
The same principle applies to storms. Many birds can detect changes in atmospheric pressure, while some animals hear frequencies far below human hearing. Research has found that some birds respond to falling barometric pressure associated with approaching storms.
Researchers say India’s traditional knowledge is worth examining, but the useful question is whether behaviour can be measured and linked to a specific environmental change.
Animal behaviour, they note, is not precise enough to replace scientific warning systems, but highlights sensory systems shaped by millions of years of evolution.
