A smart dog collar could help warn of impending earthquakes

Image courtesy of Animal Alerts

The Animal Alerts Project has launched a new initiative in Lima, Peru aimed at detecting and warning residents of earthquakes. At the heart of the project – a collaboration between animal welfare, technology, science and media industry experts – led by Rachel Grant, a behavioral ecologist and senior lecturer at London South Bank University in England, is the PetPace smart collar, which is used to monitor the health of dogs.1

In real time, this collar collects and records health data such as pulse, temperature and breathing. The dog's stress level is then determined relative to the recorded data and artificial intelligence algorithms. A simultaneous increase in stress levels among dogs throughout Lima could indicate an impending earthquake

“It has been shown in numerous systematic studies that animals often behave differently before earthquakes occur,” Grant said in a press release. “Using PetPace AI technology, Animal Alerts allows us, for the first time, to collect real-time, repeatable physiological data that can help predict short-term earthquake risk.”1

As close companions of humans with keen senses, dogs have proven to be particularly useful models for changing animal behavior prior to seismic activity. According to the American Kennel Club, a dog's nose is at least 100,000 times more sensitive than a human's, with the odor-processing part of a canine brain 7 times larger. They can also hear high-pitched sounds that humans cannot detect.

As a highly seismic area, Peru experiences 90% of global seismic activity due to its location along the Pacific Ring of Fire, 1 which makes developing a system to alert the population of earthquakes via various media a vital project. “There is an urgent need for innovative methods to warn the public before an earthquake strikes, especially since Lima's infrastructure is highly vulnerable to seismic activity. Thus, the alert in… Timely animal alerts can help save countless lives.”

However, earthquake geologist Wendy Bohon, Ph.D., was not convinced that the new initiative would work given the difficulty of predicting earthquakes.3 “It has to happen before it happens,” Bohon said in an ABC News article.

She later added: “Sometimes animals may sense waves arriving from a distance that are so small that we cannot feel them, and so we do not notice the arrival of those first small waves… The animals may seem to predict time.” An earthquake, when in fact they are reacting to the first arrival of waves that we are not attuned to.”3

However, a 2020 study conducted by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz in Germany revealed that increased activity was observed in some animals before seismic events. Researchers studied the behavior of dogs, cows and sheep near the epicenter of a 6.6-magnitude earthquake in central Italy in October 2016, and observed strong responses before earthquakes of magnitude 3.8 or higher when the animals were together in a stable. The animals equipped with biometric recording devices and GPS sensors appeared to predict earthquakes up to 20 hours in advance, with earlier reactions observed when the animals were closer to the epicenter.

References

Animal Alerts powered by PetPace™ turns pet health data into earthquake warnings. New release. BitPeace. May 20, 2024. Accessed May 21, 2024. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240520194540/enReisen J. The nose knows: Is there such a thing as a dog's nose? American Kennel Club. November 2, 2022. Accessed May 21, 2024. https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/news/the-nose-knows/Jacobo J. Wearable device could help dogs help predict earthquakes, But more research is needed, critics say. Letters of News. May 2, 2024. Accessed May 21, 2024. https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wearable-device-aid-dogs-helping-predict-earthquakes-creators/story?id=109745220Wikelski M, Mueller U, Scocco P, et al. Potential short-term earthquake prediction by observing farm animals. Ethics. 2020;126(9). https://doi.org/10.1111/eth.13078

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