Story from AFP via Breitbart, h/t to Leif Svalgaard. Maybe the Chinese had it right way back then with this gadget:
For ages, mankind has craved a tool that can provide early warning of that terrifying moment when the earth begins to shake.
But if a scientific paper published on Wednesday is confirmed, we may at last have found one.
The best hope yet of an earthquake predictor could lie in a small, brown, knobbly amphibian, it suggests.
The male common toad (Bufo bufo) gave five days’ warning of the earthquake that ravaged the town of L’Aquila in central Italy on April 6, 2009, killing more than 300 people and displacing 40,000 others, the study says.
Biologist Rachel Grant of Britain’s Open University embarked on a toad-monitoring project at San Ruffino lake, 74 kilometres (46 miles) north of L’Aquila, 10 days before the 6.3-magnitude quake struck.
Her two-person team observed the site for 29 days, counting toad numbers and measuring temperature, humidity, wind speed, rainfall and other conditions.
By March 28, more than 90 male toads had mustered for the spawning season, but two days later, their numbers suddenly fell, Grant reports.
By April 1 — five days before the quake — 96 percent of the males had fled.
Several dozen ventured back on April 9 for the full moon, a known courtship period for toads, although the tally was some 50-80 percent fewer than in previous years.
After this small peak, the numbers fell once more, only picking up significantly on April 15, two days after the last major aftershock, defined as 4.5 magnitude or higher.
In addition, the number of paired toads at the breeding site also dropped to zero three days before the quake. And no fresh spawn was found at the site from April 6 until the last big after-tremor.
Grant says the toads’ comportment is a “dramatic change” for the species.
Once male toads hole up at a breeding site, they usually never leave until the annual spawning season is over, she notes.
Eager to answer the riddle, Grant obtained Russian measurements of electrical activity in the ionosphere, the uppermost electromagnetic layer in the atmosphere, which were picked up by very low frequency (VLF) radio receivers.
The toads’ two periods of exodus both coincided with bursts of VLF disruption.
Read the entire article at Breitbart
Rewind zzzzzzzzip. Next animal prognositcator. Thank you. Rewind zzzzzzzzip. Next…
This is a really great example of one point defines a line and two points describe a curve.
I have a physicist friend from Burma who swears that all of the elephants knew the 2004 tsunamis was coming and left the coast to avoid it.
Off Topic. A recent conclave of geologists issued a consensus statement that it was a a bolide impact what done in the dinosaurs. This is still a very hotly contested issue, so a consensus is really important – isn’t it gang? That settled it in my mind. Despite the fact that thousands of geologists have been debating this since Louis Alvarez first proposed the idea in ’80 or ’81, this so-called consensus settled it.
Consensus science – coming soon to a discpiline near you.
How do they know it wasnt the Toads causing the Earthquake?
The toads gave 5 days warning of the quake that was to kill 300 people.
But nobody listened. Nobody listened.
When will people ever learn?
jorgekafkazar (10:04:41) said:
Confirmed by the observational “evidence” that all the “toadies” ran for cover as the earthquake of climate-gate was imminent.
Concerning aftershocks, if the toadies start to “sing” will that too be a sign? 😉
And, last but not least, J.H.Nelson on Radio propagation correlated to planets’ position:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/29240182/Radio-Astro
heh…Carbon Dioxide, it was actually sir Bedevere 😉
False alarm, folks! I just spoke with one of those reluctant Ruffino toads and he told me he and his pals had abandoned the breeding site because the girl-toads were the ugliest crop to show up in half a century.
Let’s see: Four-legged toads predict doom from earthquakes. Two-legged toads predict doom from global warming.
Got it. 🙂
I immediately went down to my local pond to interview some of the toads.
Me: Mr. Toad, what do you know about impending Earthquakes?
Mr. Toad: “Brivvet, brivvet, creak, brivvet.”
Me: “I see, do you see anything the future for Minnesota?”
Mr. Toad: “Brivvet, ‘cap and trade’, Brivvet..”
Then I realized I wasn’t talking to a toad, but a TODDIE!
I thought that Chang Heng was the Chinese (Hong Kong) stock market index.
Now I find out it is just some old frog lover.
Learn something new at WUWT every day.
Speaking of Chinese earthquakes; they say that if everybody in China jumped up in the air at the same time, it would cause a Richter scale 8.0 earthquake.
Well probably two of them actually; one when they all jumped; and an after shock when they all landed again.
I remember my biology teacher in high school saying that there was a local species of lizard that only lived on one side of a nearby fault line. Just because we humans have higher brain functions doesn’t mean we are any smarter than other animals.
Biologist Rachel Grant of Britain’s Open University embarked on a toad-monitoring project at San Ruffino lake, 74 kilometres (46 miles) north of L’Aquila, 10 days before the 6.3-magnitude quake struck.
apparently, the trick is to deploy your toads 10 days before the quake 🙂
Vuk etc (10:22:11) : Funny that Atelolpus, which are currently being in danger of extinction…
Well, I have just “correlated” those earthquake lights, also those bursts of VLF with your graph of changing MF :
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC13.htm
“The male common toad (Bufo bufo) gave five days’ warning of the earthquake that ravaged the town of L’Aquila in central Italy on April 6, 2009, killing more than 300 people and displacing 40,000 others, the study says.”
Sounds like the warning was worse than the quake.
While interesting, seems to me they are jumping to conclusions. research into earthquake predictions include micro-seismic events, changes in oil well and fresh water spring flows, water table changes, changes in radon gas emissions and probably a few others. If the toads are in fact “sensing” something, I would think there are far more likely factors in that list than ionosphere disturbances.
There is a long history of unusual animal behavior preceding large earthquakes. Frogs and toads are prolific among those reports and it’s known experimentally that they are also very sensitive to electromagnetic fields.
Research has been conducted for a few years now studying the changes in pre-earthquake EM environments with the goal of providing a viable early warning system utilizing a network of ground based sensors and satellites monitoring the ionosphere. The toad study demonstrates a correlation with anecdotal biological responses to measurable causative effects in the ionosphere. Ultimately it helps validate the idea that we can monitor the Earth’s EM environment for pre-earthquake signatures.
So toads and other creatures can know beforehand that major seismic events will occur, as shown by anecdotal reports with a small and growing amount of scientific backing.
But it is “commonly known” to be impossible for humans to “predict” such events as that is superstitious nonsense with no scientific backing.
Okay… Moving along now…
I have a dog who is psychotic. Other than that she is a great dog. However, when a storm is coming up, she goes frantic. I assume she has gout or arthritis or some condition which causes her great discomfort when the barometer falls (since that happens to me). She runs all over the house, trying to get through each and every door that she finds. She has run into closets and bathrooms, and is quite confused when it doesn’t afford her relief. She remains completely miserable until the storm passes, and then goes back to doing normal dog stuff.
So, toads could be doing the same thing. Leaving a particular area does not actually relieve their pain/anxiety/concern, but they feel the need to try and escape from the pain/anxiety/concern, which actually overrides their sex drives. So they are probably randomly hopping around, just trying various locations to see if they get relief. Once the trigger for this behavior is gone, they return to what they were doing.
The hard part is trying to figure out what the trigger really is. Maybe one of the scientists was wearing some particularly repugnant after-shave on the days that the toads disappeared. The Scientific Method can be a bitch sometimes.
Many of the here so clever and light comentators would be more seriously interested in digging with an open mind the issue and not just rejecting this toads’ tale whether they were living near the “pacific ring of fire”.
Shouldn’t this have waited until tomorrow?
What I see here IT IS NOT A JOKE when people lives are involve, so any approach should be welcomed.
Though still “correlations”( a bad word for post-normal scientists)
Those toads apparently sensed some electromagnetic disturbances which must drive anybody ask about it or at least read about them. Or we just choose to keep on watching the earthquake lights and dead people AFTER they ocurred , like an amusement through the media.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/28560923/Earthquake-Planets-2
http://www.scribd.com/doc/29238677/Earthquake-3
http://www.scribd.com/doc/29240182/Radio-Astro
Toads and earthquakes Ha! My unicorn told me he can predict approaching asteroids and volcanic eruptions in Southern Ontario. Time will prove his smug assertions wrong, I’m sure of it.
This is the best I can do for this thread –
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiVYjRbZMe0&hl=en_US&fs=1&]