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Laboratory animals as potential biosensors to predict earthquakes

Lab Animal volume 52, pages 97–98 (2023)Cite this article

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To the Editor — Earthquake prediction is a long-standing goal in the field of seismology because it has the potential to save lives and reduce damage to buildings and infrastructure. Despite substantial progress in our understanding of the underlying processes that cause earthquakes, predicting when and where an earthquake will occur remains a difficult and elusive goal.

The concept of using animal behaviors as biosensors for earthquake prediction is not new; as mentioned by Soter in 1999, reports of unusual animal behavior prior to seismic activity have been documented for centuries1. Evidence has shown that animals, such as birds, fish, snakes, dogs, and rodents exhibit changes in behavior and physiology before earthquakes2,3,4. Such unusual behavior could be observed from a few hours to days before an earthquake occurs3,5. Nevertheless, most reports are based on responses to surveys by avid observers who reported changes in the behavior of domestic animals and pets5,6. Such abnormal behaviors include pets going missing before an earthquake, unusual barking of dogs, violent behavior of cats, fish jumping out of tanks, and alterations in the production of milk in cows5,6,7,8. In the past 15 years, some technically robust scientific studies have also reported abnormal behavior in laboratory animals prior to and after major earthquakes, such as the 2008 Great Sichuan earthquake in China9 at a magnitude 7.9 Mw and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake in Japan10 at a magnitude 9.0–9.1 Mw. These two studies are great examples of non-seismological studies where the aberrant behavior of mice was recorded prior to an earthquake during ongoing experiments. Since several other labs around the world conduct behavioral studies daily, which require continuous circadian activity recording, these labs could report the aberrant behaviors of rodents in their experiments and correlate these behavioral changes with seismic data.

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Fig. 1: Schematic presentation of a potential experimental model for recording, analyzing, and interpreting animal behavior to predict earthquakes.

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  1. Division of Behavioral Neuroscience, Institute of Nuclear Medicine & Allied Sciences, Delhi, India

    Kailash Manda

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  1. Kailash Manda
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Correspondence to Kailash Manda.

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Manda, K. Laboratory animals as potential biosensors to predict earthquakes. Lab Anim 52, 97–98 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41684-023-01165-6

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