First Person: My Pets Reactions During the East Coast Earthquake

Clifton Heights, PA -- 1:55 pm on Tuesday afternoon, my Chinese Crested Hugo napped at my feet while I wrote at the computer, Pony my British mongrel napped downstairs and the fish swum in their aquariums. My Mom just sat down on the toilet. What a perfect time for an earthquake.

At first I thought I was having the worst panic attack of my life - which was odd, considering I wasn't panicked abut anything. The desk was shaking. I looked at Hugo. He was still napping. Then it felt as if a group of overweight raccoons hit the side of the house. Hugo snapped to his feet and began barking hysterically. Pony was up and looking around, confused. From the bathroom, I heard Mom say, "Oh, it's just an earthquake. It'll go away."

Pets Predicting Earthquakes: True or False?

As a pet owner, I was keenly disappointed that my dogs hadn't given any warnings before the shaking started. Neither I nor my toilet-bound Mom were paying attention to the fish. If they knew the quake was coming they decided to keep the information to themselves.

But what about all of those stories about pets acting up minutes before natural disasters? Don't believe a word of it, notes the US Geological Survey, America's leading experts on all things rocky. People tend to remember events inaccurately during times of high stress, such as natural disasters. Because of the millions of pets that live with people, chances are that at least one pet will seem to give a warning in the wide area of a natural disaster. However, that so-called psychic dog just could be barking hysterically just because the dog normally barks hysterically. That the dog braked just before an earthquake was pure coincidence.

Jury Still Out

Proponents of the psychic pet idea note that there have not been many studies done on whether pets can predict such things as earthquakes. The government of China did begin such a study in the 1907's but then dropped it. In 2003, a small Japanese study concluded that most dogs barked wildly or behaved erratically just before a quake struck.

Controversial British biologist and author Rupert Sheldrake argues that if the funding was there, studies of earthquake prediction by pets and wild birds would prove that pets do have earthquake abilities. Reports of animals wild and tame behaving oddly before a natural disaster goes back to 373 BC Greece and have continued in many cultures around the world.

However, both my dogs were literally caught napping.

References

PBS Nature. "Can Animals Predict Disaster?" http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/can-animals-predict-disaster/tall-tales-or-true/131/

National Geographic News. "Can Animals Sense Earthquakes?" Maryann Mott. November 11, 2003. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/11/1111_031111_earthquakeanimals.html

Author's personal experience