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Chinese Zoo Animals Monitored For Earthquake Prediction
An anonymous reader writes: Seismologists in Nanjing have set up seven observation centers at zoos and animal parks in the region to see if animals can predict when an earthquake may strike. At least three kinds of animals in the earthquake stations should corroborate each other when bizarre behavior occurs, said Zhao Bing, head of Nanjing earthquake monitoring. Discovery reports: "According to one English-language Chinese news outlet, 'At Banqiao ecological park the behavior of around 200 pigs, 2,000 chickens, and fish in a 15-hectare pond are closely monitored to detect signals of an earthquake. Breeders here create daily reports regarding animal behavior for Nanjing's seismological departments.' The news report noted that the park relies 'mainly on employees closely watching the animals' for seismological significance."
pigs and chickens in a pond?
Back in 2011 thousands of people gone berserked in London, England
I was waiting for a quake, but it never came
Why??
Do a scientific experiment (or maybe the whole point of the article is a hit piece against the Chinese zoo).
Simulate P-wave in controlled environment to see if the animals can detect them.
Otherwise, what they're doing with observing animals is not meaningful.
And before everyone gets dismissive, that is exactly what science is about - someone has an idea and sets up a controlled experiment to test it.
And if the experiment fails then you have learnt something as well.
(And sometimes you learn more from failures than you do successes - at least I do in some of my experiments/projects)
Earthquakes are highly predictable by humans, check dutchsince channel on youtube, he usually gets it right.
In many countries, people are reluctant to evict spiders from houses, because the spontaneous fleeing of spiders is supposed to to forecast an incoming earthquake. The webbing allegedly acts as a seismic antenna. Frogs and birds also exhibit confused or agitated behaviour previous to earthquakes, birds allegedly due to their sensitivity to geo-magnetism, used in their navigation skills. These signs are however, rather sybillic and only become obvious ex-post facto.
Thus, close monitoring of the Animal Kingdom is a very promising venue for earthquake prediction, now that modern technology allows economy of scale (webcams galore) and "big data" analysis servers, which could correlate sub-noise signals coming from the observation of various species.
In China this is a matter of life and death, as hundreds of millions of rural han people live in regions with very loose soil and millions of those actually dwell in caves dug into loose soil. In 1976, some 250 th. chinese people perished in a single M8 earthquake. Japan can afford to build seismic-safe structures everywhere, but China cannot for the foreseeable future and Advanced Early Warning is their only possible solution.
You seem to be suffering from PTSD where cows are concerned, did mommy use the same flash card to teach you the alphabet when you were a child?
I doctor frudenstofem recommend you sing old McDonald had a farm for 3 months as therapy.
The news report noted that the park relies 'mainly on employees closely watching the animals' for seismological significance."
How do they know what is significant? I assume that after earthquakes in the past some zoo employee reported that he/she saw the animals behaving strangely but didn't realize they were trying to tell him an earthquake was imminent. This in the country that uses rhinoceros horns and bear gall bladders as aphrodisiacs.
If nothing else it would be interesting to see the time data between different animals reactions. But I doubt any animal would give sufficient warning before the event took place. I would like to see a movie where a goat was tied to a stake and monitored by scientists 24/7 for earthquake monitoring.. and then it gets eaten by a T-Rex
Umm ...
A zoo in Welch (maybe they got a fake Welch in China?) has a horse painted to look like a zebra
http://www.walesoncraic.com/welsh-zoo-fined-20-painting-horse-look-like-zebra/
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/lea...
Silence is a state of mime.
I'm assuming those 2,000 chickens are for feeding to carnivores and not part of the exhibit. Chickens, pigs and fish... Oh my!
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Someone should do a fair test of the combined animal /humans watching the animals earth quake detection system is to see what's behind the folklore, and record the false positive `cry wolf' rate. Is there a way of looking at the effect of moving the zoo animals around, a la canary in a coal mine, or can you get the same from observing native species or zoo animals that were already at your chosen location?
for a second here when i opened the comments i could swear i was on fark or reddit.
"...200 pigs, 2,000 chickens, and fish in a 15-hectare pond..."
"...zoo. ."
Summary spelled "grocery store" wrong.
China predicted a couple of significant quakes supposedly based on animal observations in the ealry 1970s. Then they missed the largest Chinese quake in decades in Tianjin, near Beijing, in 1976. Strange animal behavior has part of Chinese peasant folklore for millennia. Various US groups tried to replicate this methodology since the 1970s without much success. A geologist in San Jose counted lost pet ads and claimed some success. But his prediction windows were so wide they were not statistically significant. Perhaps 21st century social media could help gather observations.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to monitor soggy tea leaves instead?
I would expect bizarre behavior to be the norm when 200 pigs, 2,000 chickens, and an unstated quantity of fish share a 15-hectare pond.