Do Animals Know an Earthquake is About to Hit?

Did animals know that the 5.8-magnitude earthquake was to hit the East Coast before it happened? Maybe so, according to zoo keepers:

Behavior ranged from jumping into trees and "vocalizing," to banding together.

Red ruffed lemurs sounded a distinct high-pitched barking about 15 minutes before the quake, and then again after the shaking stopped.


Apes, including the orangutan Kyle and the Western lowland gorilla Kojo, abandoned feeding-time chow seconds before humans felt the quake and climbed to the top of a "tree-like structure."

The easy-going pandas "did not appear to respond to the earthquake," zoo officials said. Also in the Great Ape House, the orangutan Iris began what zoo keepers describe as "belch vocalizing" before and after the quake. They describe the sound as an unhappy noise normally reserved for "extreme irritation."

And just before the quake, the zoo's flock of 64 flamingoes gathered close together in a "tight, flocking behavior," Moore said.

They looked, he said, "like a big pink ball."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/08/24/139912800/hearing-something-we-cant-hear-how-animals-foretold-the-earthquake?ft=1&f=100


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After being around five cats and numerous horses during thousands of aftershocks in the last 11 months I have to disagree. They seem about as clueless as humans when ever they strike and it's only the sound that alerts them to a coming shake the same as me. So while they may have better hearing that is the only advance warning I think they have got.
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