What are the predictions of animals for earthquakes?

Earthquakes are ground movements, and like storms, they are a natural phenomenon. Earthquakes will bring disaster to mankind. According to statistics, there are more than 5 million earthquakes in the world every year, of which about 1 000 are destructive earthquakes. In order to avoid or reduce this kind of disaster, it is extremely important to do a good job in earthquake prediction.

Animals that can predict earthquakes. In the long-term earthquake warning and earthquake-resistant work, people have observed that many animals have all kinds of abnormal reactions before the earthquake: livestock don't enter the enclosure, dogs bark, hibernating snakes make mice make trouble, ducks can't get out of the water and chickens can't climb trees, bees pounce on fish, parrots are frightened to fly when they hit cage pigeons, and liger yells at wolves, etc. Through the practice of earthquake prediction, people in Xingtai area of China have also compiled such a proverb: "There is trouble in the henhouse, jumping in the pigsty, sheep barking, and the earthquake is coming."

According to a large number of earthquake data, there are about 100 species of animals known to have abnormal reactions before the earthquake, including insects, fish, frogs, snakes, birds, mammals and poultry and livestock. Among them, dogs, fish, cats, chickens, birds and pigs have the most obvious reactions.

1July, 969 18 13: 24, an earthquake of magnitude 7.4 occurred in the Bohai Sea of China. Before the earthquake, the staff of Tianjin People's Park observed that many animals had abnormal behaviors. Even the lovely giant panda is lying on the ground, holding its head and screaming, but it is not sick. According to these abnormal responses, the Park Earthquake Prediction Team reported the prediction of "possible major earthquake" to Tianjin Earthquake Prevention Office on the same day 1 10. As expected, an earthquake happened two hours later, and the buildings in Tianjin shook.

1On February 4th, 975, an earthquake of magnitude 7.3 occurred in Haicheng and Yingkou. Some time before the earthquake, despite the cold weather, the hibernating python crawled out of the hole and froze as soon as it came out. In addition, the early awakening of hibernating animals such as frogs and loaches may be related to the increase of local ground temperature before the earthquake.

1At 3 o'clock on July 28th, 976, a strong earthquake of magnitude 7.8 occurred in Tangshan and Fengnan areas of Hebei Province. Abnormal animal reactions before earthquakes, like all previous major earthquakes, are very common and intense, especially in the hours before the impending earthquake.

Japan is a country with many volcanoes and earthquakes. Scientists have found that the abnormal behavior of deep-sea fish indicates that an earthquake is coming. As early as the summer of 1923, a Peruvian ichthyologist found a bearded fish in the deep sea off the wild coast of Japan. This is an abnormal phenomenon. One day later, the Great Kanto Earthquake happened. 1963165438+1October1In the early morning of Sunday, fishermen in Nijima, Japan caught a 2-meter-long deep-sea fish. In order to report this news, the TV reporter invited Professor Wei Guang, who was studying the abnormal behavior of deep-sea fish before the earthquake, and hoped that he would go to the scene by helicopter. Professor Wei Guang couldn't go to class at that time. When he said goodbye to the reporter, he joked, "Please be careful, there will be an earthquake soon." Who knows, two days later, an earthquake really happened near the new island.

Dogs, perhaps because of their keen sense of smell, were listed as the most obvious animals before the earthquake. On the eve of the Tonghai earthquake in Yunnan, four people from a mountain family were sitting around a table, playing cards with great interest. Suddenly, a dog ran in from outside the gate and barked at his master, who only cared about playing cards and ignored it. The dog was in a hurry, so he went up and grabbed his master's clothes and dragged him outside the door. The owner felt that the dog was not sensible and ruined the scenery, so he drove it out of the gate. But as soon as he sat down to play cards, the dog ran in again, biting his clothes and dragging his master out desperately. At this time, the owner was annoyed, stood up and kicked the dog and rushed out of the door together. Just then, suddenly, with a bang, the earth trembled and the house collapsed. All three people who stayed in the house were crushed to death, but he saved his life. Before the Tangshan earthquake, a farmer's German shepherd bit his master that night and wouldn't let him sleep. The master beat the dog away, and just after sleeping, the dog came to bite again. Angry and surprised, I got out of bed and beat the dog, chasing after it. Just after he left the gate, the earthquake happened. 1973 On July 23rd, before the Spike earthquake in Czechoslovakia, a female employee was asleep and was awakened by a dog. The dog licked the owner's face, bit the owner's pajamas and dragged her out of bed. She opened the door and the dog bit the owner's pajamas and ran out. Just as she stepped on the sidewalk, the earthquake happened. From these three examples, we can see that the dog is not only an excellent living earthquake detector, but also a savior in earthquake disasters, which has contributed greatly.

Why do animals predict earthquakes? Earthquake is one of the great energy release phenomena on the earth. It has been calculated that the energy released by an earthquake of magnitude 7 is equivalent to that released by more than 20 atomic bombs with a capacity of 20,000 tons, so there must be various physical, chemical and meteorological changes before the earthquake, such as geothermal, geoelectric, geomagnetic, light, sound, climate and chemical composition of groundwater. Even though these changes are very slight, some animals have very keen sensibility, which causes their physiological and behavioral responses. This is the abnormal behavior of animals before the earthquake.

At present, although people have known that some animals can predict earthquakes, their mechanism of predicting earthquakes is not fully understood. According to Professor Yu Kuai, a zoologist at Shanghai Normal University, there are three explanations and speculations in science:

First, the feeling of ultrasound and infrasound. Fish and other aquatic animals can feel ultrasonic waves and infrasound waves that people can't feel. The range of sound waves that ordinary people can feel is 16-20000Hz, and children can reach 22000Hz. Above or below this range, they can't feel it. Fish have lateral line receptors on both sides of the inner ear and body, which are mechanical receptors. They can sense 1-25 Hz infrasound waves (sound waves with a frequency lower than 20 Hz), and are sensitive to even small changes in water pressure or weak water fluctuations. Jellyfish (jellyfish) has a sensory ball on the edge of its umbrella, which can feel infrasound of 8 ~ 13 Hz. The jellyfish floating on the water can feel the infrasound generated by the friction between flowing air and waves before storm warning, so they leave the shallow sea in time to avoid the disaster of being hit by huge waves; Dolphins in the ocean can feel the sound wave of 500 ~ 65438+100000 Hz, and have a perfect sonar system. Therefore, it can use ultrasonic waves (sound waves with frequency higher than 20000Hz) to correctly track fish schools thousands of meters away and distinguish species. It can be seen that the abnormal reactions of aquatic animals such as fish before the earthquake are probably related to the occurrence of infrasound and ultrasonic waves before the strong earthquake.

Second, it is highly sensitive to changes in heat. Before the earthquake, cave animals had obvious abnormal reactions. For example, snakes have buccal nests or sensory nests, and the sensory cells in the nests are extremely sensitive to "heat". Someone has experimented with South American pythons. Under the infrared ray with the wavelength of 10600 nm, when the heat is 0.084 joules per square centimeter, there is a thermal reaction. It is speculated that the abnormal response of snakes before the earthquake may be related to geothermal changes.

Third, the feeling of weak mechanical vibration. Poultry and birds have tiny vibration sensors in their legs, so they can feel very weak mechanical vibration (tens to 1200 Hz) on branches or on the ground. The Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences has done an experiment: Divide 100 pigeons into two groups, with 50 pigeons in each group, and cut off the nerves connected between the vibration sensory corpuscles and the central nervous system of one group of pigeons. Results Before an earthquake of magnitude 4 or above, a group of pigeons whose nerves were cut off were basically quiet as usual, while the pigeons in the other control group were all scared to fly. This shows that the pigeon's vibration sensing ability can feel the fluctuation before the earthquake. Before the strong earthquake, pigs, cattle, sheep and other domestic animals generally had abnormal reactions. It may be related to a large number of annular corpuscles which are very sensitive to mechanical vibration in their legs, toes and abdominal mesentery.

In addition, bats can also feel the sound wave of 1500- 150000 Hz. Its ultrasonic positioning system is extremely superior, which not only has high resolution, but also has strong anti-interference, and can receive the signal reflected by small insects from the noise background 200 times higher than the signal. Therefore, the migration of bats before the earthquake is related to the perception of ultrasound.

According to Professor Helmut Tribuchu of Frie University in Berlin, the release of charged ions from the ground can cause "pre-earthquake", which makes dogs, pigs, birds and other animals feel nervous. This is the abnormal behavior of animals that people often observed before the earthquake.

So, can humans predict earthquakes? For a long time, many scientists believe that human beings do not have the ability to predict earthquakes like animals, and only animals can feel the external changes that human beings regard as "static" before earthquakes. Later, a scientist in California proposed for the first time that human beings can behave abnormally in a short time before an earthquake, just like some animals. For example, in the San Francisco Bay Area, residents there developed symptoms such as irritability, dizziness, headache and nausea within 72 hours before the earthquake. Because everyone's physiological function and psychological state are different, the symptoms are also different.

Not long ago, biologists Martha and Adams of Tim Institute in the United States, based on the analysis of abnormal human behavior before the earthquake, predicted that the accuracy could reach 80% within 8 days. Adams attributed the abnormal behavior of people before the earthquake to the influence of geomagnetic field changes on human body.

Further exploration of animal earthquake prediction will play a great role in earthquake prevention. Firstly, in animal earthquake prediction, it is necessary to distinguish whether the abnormal behavior of animals is caused by earthquake precursors or other factors, otherwise it will lead to false earthquake prediction. Because natural phenomena are very complex, some changes in environmental conditions that are not precursors of earthquakes will also prompt animals to behave abnormally, which is often similar to the abnormal reaction of animals before earthquakes. For example, the weather is sultry. Before the thunderstorm, due to the low air pressure and high humidity, the dissolved oxygen in the water decreases, so fish will flood the pond, dragonflies and mosquitoes will fly in groups, and ants will be busy moving to high places, showing abnormal behavior. For another example, before the storm comes, large groups of seabirds will fly to land, many fish will float in droves, deep-sea fish will swim to shallow water or even float to the surface, and even whales will flock to the sea. Another example is the change of feeding conditions, including the change of animal houses, the change of breeders and the change of feed types, which often leads to various abnormal reactions of animals. In addition, in the breeding season, animals will also show behavioral disorders due to their own physiological changes. When pigs, horses, cows and sheep are in estrus, they are often restless, have poor appetite and chase each other; Dogs howl in estrus, cats often bark in estrus, and fish will breed and swim back. These abnormal behaviors have nothing to do with earthquakes.

Secondly, animals with abnormal behavior before the earthquake are often individual species and a few animals at first, and are also affected by individual differences. In the same animal, there will be three situations: no abnormal response, no obvious abnormal response and obvious abnormal response, which will also bring difficulties to animal earthquake prediction. Therefore, we must pay close attention to the types, quantity, scope and degree of abnormal animal reactions. Because it is impossible to make a correct judgment without a certain number.

Thirdly, using animals to predict earthquakes is a new research topic. At present, the relationship between the change of animal behavior and earthquakes is still unclear, and it must be further explored in the future earthquake prevention and earthquake resistance work. Experts from the Turkish Cat Lovers Association found that cats' feet can feel the slightest vibration, and they can distinguish the coming earthquake earlier than humans and ordinary animals. Cats' sense of smell and hearing is also quite keen, so some scholars have listed cats' "sixth sense" (including cats' prediction of earthquakes) as a research topic. According to the folklore that "catfish turning over is a sign before the earthquake", Japanese scientists have found that this kind of fish is extremely sensitive to slight vibration after long-term observation, and the weak current changes caused before the earthquake can also be felt by catfish's particularly sensitive receptors, so catfish are raised in many places in Japan as living "earthquake alarms" to observe its every move at any time. In addition, the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry also called on people in earthquake-prone areas to raise a kind of white fish, which has the special ability to sense tiny vibrations-it ran around in the water in horror a few hours before the earthquake, indicating that the earthquake is coming. After Xingtai earthquake, China has made a long-term and systematic study on dogs, rats, pigs, chickens, pigeons, loaches, Monopterus albus, crucian carp, leeches, etc. 10 in this area, focusing on the indicators of animal response, such as pigeon's frightened flight response, cat's daily respiratory frequency curve change and abnormal behavior response. From which we summed up the laws and gained some experience. Using these experiences, earthquakes of magnitude 3 ~ 5 within 50 kilometers have been predicted many times.