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Birds Fled Area Before Tornadoes Appeared
SternisheFan sends a report from scientists who were tracking a group of birds — golden-winged warblers — in the Appalachian mountains. Just a few days after the birds completed their seasonal migration, they did something odd — they picked up and moved again. Shortly thereafter, a series of storms swept through that area of the U.S., which led to a destructive tornado outbreak (abstract).
After the storm had blown over, the team recaptured five of the warblers and removed the geolocators. These are tiny devices weighing about half a gram, which measure light levels. Based on the timing and length of the days they record, these gadgets allow scientists to calculate and track the approximate location of migratory birds. In this case, all five indicated that the birds had taken unprecedented evasive action, beginning one to two days ahead of the storm's arrival. "The warblers in our study flew at least 1,500km (932 miles) in total," Dr. Streby said. They escaped just south of the tornadoes' path — and then went straight home again. By 2 May, all five were back in their nesting area."
Wow, someone just now noticed that animals can easily detect incoming low pressure fronts and hide from the weather.
Guess what, humans are essentially the only ones who can't tell when bad weather is coming. Ask anyone who spends some time in nature rather than hiding in some office or school room.
Fish, cows, horses, dogs, cats, squirrels, birds, pretty much anything you can think of takes cover well before a storm, except us.
The warblers weren't running form 'tornados' they were running from low pressure gradients moving in rapidly.
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...what ruffled THEIR feathers?
According to TFA, they sensed low level harmonics in the atmosphere long before the storms arrived...
" The most likely tip-off was the deep rumble that tornadoes produce, well below what humans can hear. Noise in this "infrasound" range travels thousands of kilometres, and may serve as something of an early warning system for animals that can pick it up. "It's very unlikely that this species is the only group doing this," Dr Streby said. Even from casual birdwatching in the area as the storm drew nearer, he said, "It seemed like there were far fewer birds - so I suspect it's not a species-specific trait." "
This sort of thing makes me chuckle, I grew up around a forest (and a jungle too) and we could always tell when people (or predators) were coming into our area.
The birds went silent or made their warning calls, the thing is you kind of learned those sounds (or lack of) subconsciously.
As we got older we made the connection, but as kids when the birds went silent so did we, listening for what it was they heard or saw.
There were a variety of other indicators for things like seasonal changes (ant nest activity etc) and we learned these things for our areas as well.
So it's no surprise to anyone living near by or in the woods that animals can do this, that is if they pay attention.
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I remember a story about a guy photographing animals in an area where a Tsunami hit back in 2004. He said he was taking pictures when suddenly all the animals, I think he said they were some kind of antelope, suddenly looked toward the ocean then the entire herd ran away. He was greatly puzzled until a while later when he was hanging onto the top of a tree for his very life. I know if I'm somewhere and suddenly all the animals start hauling ass I'm going to follow them.
Low level harmonics are below what birds can hear too, but they can feel them, and so can we. Of course, Tornadoes that are going to form two days in the future don't produce this deep rumble. They may have sensed the pressure dropping, which humans can also sense, and then they flew away from where they were in hopes of finding higher pressure somewhere else.
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The trouble with stories like this is that animals do a whole host of stuff that we cannot explain, and we connect it to events that happen after the fact.
Situation 1 : Lots of animals are running somewhere. Nothing happens.... they must have just been spooked by something random.
Situation 2 : Lots of animals are running somewhere. There's a tsunami/earthquake/tornado.... they must have known something we don't.
Finding that some animals behave in an odd, unexplained way just before a major natural disaster isn't news - Animals behave in an odd, unexplained way all the time.
There has been lots of genuine research into animal behaviour to try and predict major natural disasters, nearly all of which has been fruitless. Many animals are killed by natural disasters.
Now, if someone actually predicted a natural disaster by using animal behaviour, that might be interesting. Saying that the animals acted weird just before, when looking back, is suspect.
so why don't we start listening for it with our warning systems?
That's what I was thinking, also how can a tornado make any type of noise 2 days before it forms? I can understand animals picking up things we can't, deer may hear the rumble of a quake that causes a tsunami, my dog routinely hears thunder 15-20 minutes before I do and looks for a hiding spot, but how the hell does any animal "hear" something that won't exist for another two days?
Having said that the animal kingdom is full of "mysterious knowledge", for example crocodiles in Northern Australia can somehow "calculate" when a king tide will occur, about an hour before the event they gather at a particular ford across a river where the unusually high tide spills over the ford leaving a bonanza of fish stranded on the rocks. Even Attenborough admits he doesn't have a clue how the crocodiles "know" when to gather at the ford.
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