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Chinese snakes predict eartquakes!

steenkh

Philosopher
steenkh
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A Danish paper printed an article on this story. Apparently, an earthquake bureau in Nanning uses video-monitoring of snakes to predict earthquakes:
"When an earthquake is about to occur, snakes will move out of their nests, even in the cold of winter," Jiang was quoted as saying. "If the earthquake is a big one, the snakes will even smash into walls while trying to escape."
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I have my doubts, especially, considering that the snakes are said to sense an earthquake 3-5 days before it happens, which seems to me to be rather long time to move out of the nest in the cold of winter!
 
That reminds me of the scene in the Simpsons where Lisa has all sorts of weather-monitoring gadgets and books to hand, and predicts a hurricane is coming. Homer doesn't believe her, then the dog starts barking and running around, and the hurricane hits. Homer exclaims "the animals are always first to know!"
 
steenkh said:
A Danish paper printed an article on this story. Apparently, an earthquake bureau in Nanning uses video-monitoring of snakes to predict earthquakes:

I have my doubts, especially, considering that the snakes are said to sense an earthquake 3-5 days before it happens, which seems to me to be rather long time to move out of the nest in the cold of winter!
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With earthquakes I find it unlikely, but they do use fish to test water quality in a fashion something like that
 
In the latest Swift Newsletter mr. Randi urges us to be open for the idea that snakes can predict earthquakes. However, I still think that while they might sense earthquakes before they happen, it seems highly unlikely that they will leave their nests 3-5 days before an earthquake! Because they shelter in caves and under rocks they could be killed by an earthquake, and leaving their shelter may mean added survival ability, but leaving the shelter days before an earthquake could likely mean they got killed by cold, and would not be a survivable behaviour.

I remain skeptical.
 
I think that this theory maybe based, at least partially in some grain of truth. Its well known to geologists that prior to major quakes there are a series of foreshocks and other high frequecy stress release events within the earths crust. These type of events are recorded and are being studied by scientest today, so it may just be that snakes, and indeed othe animals, are highly sensitised to such events.

Phil
 
robinson said:
I saw that in India all the elephants went to high ground before the Tsunami hit. They couldn't stop them.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0104_050104_tsunami_animals.html

There seems to be a long history of animals knowing in advance that the earth is getting ready to move.
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I remember those reports in the days after the tsunami. It was generally accepted (here) that those reports were fantasies of the reporters. If you looked closely at news reports you could also find mentions of mass killing of animals that had been caught unawares just like humans - and not just livestock.
 
Perhaps I should add that we also discussed that in general, animals are not trapped inside houses and alleys as humans are and they are also quicker to take to flight when in danger, whereas humans stop to think before they act, and they might try to save their relatives or their possessions.
 
The problem about attributing such an ability to sensing foreshocks is that this will not make animal's predictions any more reliable (though perhaps cheaper) than what we can do with our instruments. SO maybe snakes do try to flee some time before a quake, but if they make as many false alerts as we get from using seismometers, it is really of very little use.

But, I hope the Chinese are good at it. I'm going to China in the first week of February.

Hans
 
Anatomically snakes are made for sensing ground tremors. In fact without hearing, seeing or smelling, snakes can often sense people and predators and prey by merely feeling the ground vibrations other organisms make as they move along. Vibrations are believed to travel up the jaw bones of the snake and are transmitted directly to the head according to one researcher's theory. Snakes have no ear openings or external ears. It is not at all unlikely they can sense an earthquake in advance. However, they can only sense a ground tremor when it occurs, so it would depend on how long before a quake tremors begin to occur. If an earthqualke is preceded by tremors/foreshocks 3 or 5 or whatever number of days before a quake they will feel it and respond by moving away from it.

If they are buried in cold weather, snakes are hibernating, and are not able to rouse in response to a tremor or foreshock. However, if they are merely
resting or sleeping in their dens in more temperate/warmer times of the year then they undoubtedly will.
 
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(two postings slipped in)

Reports of animals acting strange in advance of earthquakes is so common and historic, that it has been proposed to set up systems using them as a warning device. I found this about the Tsunami

http://www.prijatelji-zivotinja.hr/indexen.php?u=htmlen/tsunami.html

I remember after the last San Fran quake there was the idea of setting up a phone number and computer system, so that owners noticing animals acting pre-earthquake could call, and the computer would map out calls and times and come up with a grid of animal behavior, and it would be compared to actual events.

But it was deemed woo to even try it. After all, if animals could sense earthquakes in advance, we would know about this already. And since we already know they can't, why do any research?

:wackywink:

Somebody should tell them Chinese scientist how wrong they are. Because actually doing something like watching snakes is just crazy.
 
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What I like about this setup, is that one can simply wait and see what happens with the snakes, in regards to earthquakes. Its almost like a scientific experiment.
 
And since we already know they can't, why do any research?
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I suppose one could also say because we already know that snakes CAN sense ground tremors why bother doing any research either?

Snakes can't hear airborne sounds, many can't see all that well, and all have to physically pick up odor molecules on their tongues and transport them to an organ in the roof of the mouth but one of their best senses is picking up vibrations from the ground due to their close proximity thereto.
 
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SteveGrenard said:
I suppose one could also say because we already know that snakes CAN sense ground tremors why bother doing any research either?
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Because they can predict earthquakes? If this works, every earthquake area in the world will want some of them snakes.
 
Okay, I checked the sources on this story. These snakes are being raised on snake farms, which means they are in enclosures and kept warm year round so whether its cold outside or not is irrelevant. Snake activity is temperature dependent.

This also makes video monitoring their behavior much simpler as well. You don't need these particular snakes or species, any snakes will do.

Chinese farm raise snakes for traditional Chinese medical purposes ... they drink blood from fresh killed snake as an aphrodisiaic or Chinese viagra.


The earthquake bureau in the quake prone Chinese city of Nanning is monitoring snake farms for erratic reptile behaviour in what is claimed to be a new way to predict earthquakes.

Bureau director Jiang Weisong said that snakes would try and escape when an earthquake was imminent, even in winter. If the earthquake is a large one the snakes will crash into the walls in their efforts to get away.

http://www.shortnews.com/shownews.cfm?id=59206&CFID=23481869&CFTOKEN=37592363
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Chinese officials say they have a new system to detect impending earthquakes by following the behaviour of snakes, state media reported on Thursday.

The earthquake bureau in Nanning, capital of the southern Guangxi region, said its system combines old knowledge on the instincts of the reptiles with modern communication technology, the China Daily newspaper reported two days after two earthquakes struck Taiwan.

"Of all the creatures on Earth, snakes are perhaps the most sensitive to earthquakes," bureau director Jiang Weisong was quoted as saying.

Jiang said snakes can sense an earthquake up to 120 kilometres away and three to five days before it happens.

They respond to the impending tremors by moving out of their nests, even in winter, and trying to escape, Jiang said.

Experts at the bureau monitor snakes at local farms via video cameras linked to a broadband connection. The video feed runs 24 hours a day.
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More at:

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2006/12/28/snakes-quakes.html
 
When these people say that an earthquake will hit a certain region within the next two days and an earthquake does hit then I will start to believe them.

The earthquake must be of a size that hits the region less than once every year. Also not too many false positives.
 
rjh01 said:
When these people say that an earthquake will hit a certain region within the next two days and an earthquake does hit then I will start to believe them.

The earthquake must be of a size that hits the region less than once every year. Also not too many false positives.
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Since you can't ask an agitated snake whether or not the tremor it is reacting to is an earthquake or something else (e.g. a big truck or a tank rolling by) and they are super sensitive to all kinds of vibrations, this is the most problematic part of the idea. Also the press accounts indicate they try and breech or hit the walls of their enclosures which they do all the time even if the action is not ( necessarily) the result of a ground trmor presaging an earthquake. It's called escape and snake keepers know their pets are
escape artists. Many people name their snakes Houdini for this reason.

Snakes react to vibrations because of an abundance of caution and instincts favoring self preservation. They cannot discriminate between earthquakes or anything else so false positives are likely to occur frequently for several reasons. Conclusion: stupid idea.
 
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