Possessing Intelligence and having sensors to detect things around are different things

Q: Humans are thousands times more intelligent and prudent than animals and birds. But why do animals and birds sense natural disasters, earthquakes and storms before they occur? Why don't humans sense this?

Krishna: Possessing Intelligence and having sensors to detect things around are different things.

Different animals have different sensational radars to pick up changes in the atmosphere around them.

One of the most important investigations into how animals could predict disasters was carried out some years ago by a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany. The study (1) involved recording the movement patterns of different animals (cows, sheep and dogs) – a process known as biologging – on a farm in the earthquake-prone region of the Marches in central Italy. Collars with chips were attached to each animal, which sent movement data to a central computer every few minutes between October 2016 and April 2017.

During this period, official statistics recorded over 18,000 quakes in the region, from tiny tremors measuring just 0.4 magnitude up to a dozen quakes notching 4 or above .

The researchers found evidence that the farm animals began to change their behaviour up to 20 hours before an earthquake. Whenever the monitored farm animals were collectively 50% more active for more than 45 minutes at a stretch, the researchers predicted an earthquake with a magnitude above 4.0. Seven out of eight strong earthquakes were correctly predicted in this way.

"The closer the animals were to the epicentre of the impending shock, the earlier they changed their behaviour," scientists said in 2020 when the study results were released (3). This is exactly what you would expect when physical changes occur more frequently at the epicentre of the impending earthquake and become weaker with increasing distance.

Another study (2) carried out by researchers monitoring the movements of tagged goats on the volcanic slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily also found the animals seemed to have an advance sense of when Etna was going to burst into life.

Scientists are now exploring whether these electromagnetic perturbations in the atmosphere prior to earthquakes could be a warning sign of impending quakes which animals may be sensing.

Animals and birds may sense natural disasters like earthquakes and storms before humans because they have heightened senses, particularly for detecting low-frequency vibrations and changes in air pressure. These senses, often more acute than human senses, allow them to detect subtle shifts in the environment that precede a disaster.

Scientists are now exploring whether these electromagnetic perturbations in the atmosphere prior to earthquakes could be a warning sign of impending quakes which animals may be sensing. Earthquakes are invariably preceded by a period when severe stresses arise in deep rock – stresses known to create electronic charges called "positive holes". These highly mobile electronic charge carriers can flow quickly from the crust to the Earth's surface, where they ionise air molecules above where they appear. Such ionisation has been noted prior to quakes across the globe. As these positive holes flow, they also generate ultra-low frequency electromagnetic waves, providing an additional signal that soem animals may be able to pick up.

These animals may be picking up

• Infrasound: Many animals, especially birds, possess the ability to detect infrasound, which are low-frequency sounds and vibrations that humans cannot hear. These infrasounds can travel long distances through the Earth and air, and they are often emitted before seismic events or strong winds.
• Pressure Changes:Animals can also sense changes in air or water pressure, which can be indicators of approaching storms or tsunamis. For instance, sharks have been observed to swim to deeper waters when storms cause pressure drops, suggesting their sensitivity to these changes.
• Vibrations:Animals can also detect the vibrations of an earthquake a few seconds before it occurs, thanks to their heightened senses of touch and hearing. While humans may not notice the vibrations, animals can often sense them.
• Other Senses: Some animals may also use their sense of smell to detect gases released from quartz crystals before an earthquake, or they may sense ionization of the air caused by large rock pressures in earthquake zones, according to Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften.
• Evolutionary Adaptations:These heightened senses and abilities to detect subtle changes in the environment are likely evolutionary adaptations that have helped animals survive in challenging environments, including natural disasters.

Earthquakes are invariably preceded by a period when severe stresses arise in deep rock – stresses known to create electronic charges called "positive holes". These highly mobile electronic charge carriers can flow quickly from the crust to the Earth's surface, where they ionise air molecules above where they appear. Such ionisation has been noted prior to earthquakes (4) across the globe. As these positive holes flow, they also generate ultra-low frequency electromagnetic waves, providing an additional signal that some animals may be able to pick up.

Earthquake precursors aren't well documented scientifically, though.

But some scientists theorize that perhaps some animals detect pressure waves before earthquakes arrive, perhaps they detect changes in electric fields as fault lines when rock starts to compress. 

Positive holes could also cause certain toxic chemicals  to appear before quakes. For example, if they come into contact with water, they can trigger oxidation reactions which create the bleaching agent hydrogen peroxide. Chemical reactions between the charge carriers and organic matter in the soil could trigger other unpleasant products such as ozone.

Meanwhile, days before the 7.7 magnitude Gujarat earthquake in India in 2001,  a surge in carbon monoxide levels was picked up by satellites over a 100 square kilometre (39 sq mile) region centred on what turned out to be the epicentre of the eventual quake. Scientists speculated that carbon monoxide gas could be forced out of the earth due to the build-up of stress in rocks as quake pressure builds.

Many animals, of course, are equipped with highly developed sensory apparatus that can read an array of natural signals on which their lives may depend – so it seems perfectly possible that some animals may be able to pick up any earthquake precursors. Unpleasant chemicals could be sniffed out, low frequency waves picked up, and ionised air sensed by sensations in fur or feathers.

In 2014, scientists tracking golden-winged warblers in the US recorded a startling example of what's known as an evacuation migration (5). The birds suddenly took off from their breeding ground in the Cumberland Mountains of eastern Tennessee and flew 700km (435 miles) away – despite having just flown 5,000km (3,100 miles) in from South America. Shortly after the birds left, a terrifying swarm of over 80 tornadoes struck the area, killing 35 people and causing over $1bn (£740m) in damage.The suggestion seemed clear – the birds had somehow sensed the twisters coming from more than 400km (250 miles) away. As to how, initial focus is on infrasound – low frequency background sounds inaudible to humans, but present throughout the natural environment. Meteorologists and physicists have known for decades that tornadic storms make very strong infrasound that can travel thousands of kilometres from the storm. Infrasound from severe storms travels at a frequency the birds would have been well attuned to hearing. Detecting variation in infrasound is also thought to be the mechanism by which migrating birds seem able to dodge storms on vast ocean crossings.

Well, most of this is only based on preliminary observation, mere speculation and just theoretical assumption as confirmations didn’t come with solid evidence till date. People “attribute” animals’ keen senses as the prime reason for disaster detection.

Whatever it is, other animals have more evolved senses than us in some cases and perhaps that is the reason why they behave in the way they do before some disasters struck. Dogs, elephants, fish, toads, cats, goats, birds, cows, snakes are more pronounced in these capabilities because of their more evolved senses.

Humans don't have senses as highly evolved as some animals because different species have adapted to their unique environments, leading to specialized sensory systems that are not always comparable across species. While humans excel at integrating and interpreting a broad range of sensory information, other animals may be more sensitive to specific environmental cues, like infrared radiation or magnetic fields, that humans cannot perceive naturally.

Doesn’t matter!

Human beings are more intelligent and that is why we build instruments even though we lack those senses to detect things around.

Footnotes:

1. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/eth.13078
2. A Four-Legged Early-Warning System
3. https://www.campus.uni-konstanz.de/en/science/the-sixth-sense-of-an...
4. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S136468260900...
5. https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(14)01428-6