Can goats predict earthquakes? Can dogs predict volcanic eruptions? These scholars think so Animal behavior

Scientists are recruiting some unusual recruits in their efforts to predict earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other natural phenomena. They are enrolling thousands of dogs, goats and other farm animals – as well as a wide range of wild animals – in studies that will monitor their movements from space.

The program uses small transmitters that are mounted on mammals, birds and insects. The detailed movements of these creatures will then be monitored by a dedicated satellite that will be launched next year.

The goal, the researchers say, is not only to study how they react to impending natural events such as volcanic eruptions, but to gain new insights into migration, the spread of disease among animals and the impact of the climate crisis.

“Eventually, we hope to launch a fleet of about six satellites and create a global monitoring network that will not only provide details of wildlife movements and animal health across the planet, but also reveal how organisms respond to natural phenomena such as earthquakes,” the project leader said. Martin Wikelski, of the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior in Germany.

The value of studying tagged animals in this latter area has already been demonstrated in early experiments in Sicily on the slopes of Mount Etna, Wikelski said last week. “We found that goat behavior is very good at predicting large volcanic eruptions.”

Sensors showed that the animals become stressed before an eruption and refuse to move to higher pastures that they would normally be happy to visit. “They already know what's coming. We don't know how they do it, but they do it,” Wikelski said.

Likewise, researchers monitored dogs, sheep and other farm animals in the Abruzzo Mountains outside Rome, and found that they also reacted in ways that predicted seven out of eight major earthquakes in the region over the past 12 years.

Animals may interact with ions released by rocks in the period leading up to eruptions, as is the case at Mount Etna. Photography: scientific

Stories of animals behaving strangely before earthquakes or explosions are not new. The Greek historian Thucydides claimed that rats, dogs, snakes and weasels abandoned the city of Helles just before the earthquake in 373 BC.

Likewise, the 1975 Haicheng earthquake occurred in China after snakes and rats were seen leaving their burrows.

Why these animals behave this way is less clear. “In preparation for an earthquake, tectonic plates slide past each other under enormous pressures, spewing ions from the rocks into the air,” said Wikelski, founder of the International Collaboration for Animal Research Using Space (ICARUS), an international collaboration involving teams of scientists from around the world. “Maybe animals will react to that.”

Icarus was made possible because of a revolution in labeling technology. Small digital transmitters – using small lithium batteries – and small, cheap and plentiful GPS devices have made it possible to make tags weighing as little as a few grams.

“We're going from where we couldn't really trace most vertebrate species on the planet to its heart,” Scott Yanko, an ecologist at the University of Michigan, told MIT Technology Review. “We are now able to track most things.”

Understanding how organisms react to geological changes is just one area of ​​interest in that revolution, Wikelski added. “For example, we can survey the health of wildlife from space,” he said.

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Examples include electronic ear tags – equipped with small 30-gram accelerometers – which have been attached to wild boars. Through changes in the animal's movements, these studies show that if a pig becomes infected with African swine fever – a highly contagious virus – it spreads easily between wild boars and domestic pigs.

Researchers say knowing when outbreaks occur in the wild may be important for reducing the disease's impact on farms. “This is a game-changer in wildlife disease surveillance,” said Kevin Morrell, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute.

This technology should also help scientists understand the processes that drive migrations. Transmitters have been fitted to creatures as small as the death's-headed butterfly, and their movements could soon reveal the mysteries behind the 2,000-mile-long migrations they make between Europe and Africa every year.

“Similarly, we will be able to study animal populations to determine how they respond to habitat changes caused by global warming,” Wikelski said.

Icarus was originally scheduled to be fully operational several years ago when the team began working with Russian scientists to use a radio telescope on the International Space Station to observe tagged animals. “After the invasion of Ukraine, we decided to stop this cooperation,” Wikelski said.

As an alternative, the team has built a small satellite called the Icarus CubeSat, which is scheduled to launch next year. “Next, we will expand our operations until we have about six cubesats and a permanent system to monitor animals as they move and migrate across the world,” Wikelski said. “This should provide us with a huge amount of data about the way animals behave.”

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