Using Toads to Predict Earthquakes

ClockEndGooner writes "The BBC is reporting that a team led by Dr. Friedemann Freund from NASA and Dr. Rachel Grant from the UK's Open University have found that 'animals may sense chemical changes in groundwater that occur when an earthquake is about to strike.' Just prior to the quake that struck L'Aquila, Italy in 2009, Grant observed a mass toad exodus from a colony she was monitoring as part of her PhD project, and her published results prompted NASA to contact her as they found that highly stressed tectonic plates released a greater amount of positively charged ions that affected the water quality, which was sensed by the toads. According to NASA's Freund, 'Once we understand how all of these signals are connected, if we see four of five signals all pointing in [the same] direction, we can say, "ok, something is about to happen."'"

Comments

Annual phenomenon?

[gnatman64]

I was just listening to this week's episode of Big Picture Science http://radio.seti.org/ where they addressed this issue, and the scientist they interviewed claimed that the toads that started this whole thing naturally migrate every year. Not sure who's right, but I'm more likely to believe it was a fluke until they can actually prove the ability to predict an earthquake before it happens, and not after.

Re:I've noticed they can give warning of a quake

[sFurbo]

That is detection, not prediction. There are several different types of tremors coming from earthquakes, and they travel at different speeds. The toads probably detect some of the faster ones that you don't. They then go quite just before the ones you can detect arrives.

Can earthquakes predict toads?

[Required Snark]

Just wondering.