(orchestral music)
(chalk writing on a chalkboard)
(beep)
- Hey Brain Stuff it is me, Ben.
Have you heard about how pets sometimes
go missing just before an earthquake hits?
Or how about in 2004 when a tsunami
hit Southeast Asia and killed
more than 200,000 people
but almost no wild animals?
Did you know that dogs,
elephants, antelopes,
bats, and even flamingos fled the scene
before the waves hit?
Even flamingos man.
Many people assume this is because animals
are more attuned to their
environment than we are.
Others, others like the United
States Geological Survey,
say that there is no connection
between animal behavior
and natural disasters.
But if there were wouldn't
it warrant a closer look?
I hope so because that's
what this episode is about.
The majority of researchers
looking into this
aren't claiming that animals
have some kind of weird sixth sense
or anything super natural going on.
What they do think,
however, is that animals
make a greater use of
their senses than we do.
Most likely, animals can
hear sounds that we can not,
especially the infrasonic
low-pitched vibrations
made by earthquakes, storms, volcanoes,
avalanches, oceans, and other stuff.
So with their greater
sensitivity to noise,
it makes sense that animals
would perceive these before us.
If you heard a deep, rumbling sound
coming at you from a
wide angle, ask yourself,
what would you do, hang
out making sandwiches?
I know, I know, the next question is
"well Ben what kind of sandwich?"
But that's an episode for a different show
(a bell rings)
which you should also watch.
Did it pop up? Okay.
One study that supports this
infrasonic hearing theory
came about when a guy named Stanley Coren
was studying whether dogs
suffered from seasonal affective disorder.
One day many of his 193 test
dogs suddenly flipped out.
They lost it.
Coren couldn't figure
out what was going on
until a day later when he noticed
that an earthquake struck nearby
at a 6.8 on the Richter Scale.
Here's where it gets crazy.
After reviewing the results,
Coren found that 14 of the
animals had hearing impairment
and those were the dogs that did not
become anxious before the earthquake.
So, digging deeper, he noticed that dogs
with floppy ears were less likely
to be agitated than those,
ya know, perky open ears.
So it looks like the strength
of their sense of hearing
was what attuned the dogs to
the earthquakes low tones.
Another theory is that
through their sense of touch
animals can feel vibrations
through the ground
or sense shifts in air or water pressure.
Scientists have observed that sharks
change their behavior when storms
cause pressure drops,
swimming to deeper waters
where they'll be protected.
They're not the only ones doing this.
Birds and insects also seek cover
when this sort of stuff goes down.
Using animals to monitor natural disasters
could potentially effect how
we make safety decisions.
China did this in 1975
when they evacuated a city
before an earthquake
hit, after their animals
showed signs of high anxiety.
It's estimated that they
saved thousands of lives
because of this decision.
What do you think?
Have you ever witnessed an
animal predict a disaster?
Does your cat get weird right
before something goes down?
Let us know in the comments.
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