Earthquake prediction is perhaps the greatest failure of modern science. Geologists use the most sophisticated instruments to study the seismic activity in the geological hotspots of the earth. They can observe any seismic activity in the furthest corner of our planet, but they still are nowhere near to predict an earthquake correctly.
Frustrated about the limits of geology, some scientists now take a different approach...
EARTHQUAKE SNAKES
Animals and the Science of Earthquake Prediction
Studying snakes, toads and ants, researchers have noticed peculiar behavior just days before an earthquake strikes. Could this observation help to predict earthquakes in the future?
“Absolutely”, says Jiang Weisong from the Nanning Earthquake Bureau in China, and presents hard evidence to his claims. Weisong observes currently 143 snake nests at several local reptile farms and he shows photographs of some dead snakes which were taken two days before a major earthquake hit the region. “The snakes hit their head against the walls until they were bleeding. And they didn’t stop. They wanted to escape the farm and run for their lives. They committed suicide.”
Looking at the different data he collected over the last four years, Jiang Weisong is convinced that his snakes will give him a 48 hour lead before the region is hit by a major earthquake. It’s not a lot of time, but it would allow the evacuation of many people and safe thousands of lives. And it would not be the first time that animals in China have helped to predict an earthquake.
In February 1975 hibernating snakes came out of their holes freezing to death on the snowy surface near the Chinese metropolis Haicheng. Archive footage shows how strange behaviour of animals led to the evacuation of one million people just in time. An earthquake of magnitude 7.3 struck the city a few days later.
China is not the only place, where strange animal behaviour has been observed before an earthquake. In April 2009 Rachel Grant from the Open University in Milton Keynes (UK) was on a field trip in Central Italy to observe the breeding of common toads. All of a sudden 96 percent of the male toads abandoned the site in the middle of breeding season. Five days later an earthquake struck the city of L’Aquila killing 308 people. “Toads would normally remain until the completion of spawning”, says Rachel Grant. When they started coming back, she knew there must be a relation to the earthquake.
But what is the underlying reason of such behaviour. What triggers the 6th sense of these animals? In the USA, we investigate how animals sense earthquakes before they strike. Physicist Friedmann Freund and his team have discovered that if you crush a rock almost to breaking point, it produces an electrical current. Translating his lab experiment to the enormous forces of plate tectonics, the electric current within the earth crust could be one reason for the peculiar animal reactions before an earthquake occurs. But electrical forces are not the only explanation for strange animal behaviour.
This film will investigate how animal behavior and plate tectonics are related and how this could lead to a new approach in predicting earthquakes successfully. We will follow the key scientists in Italy, China and Turkey and craft a documentary which will present their research, motivation, and their difficulties to get acknowledged in the scientific community. Even today, seismic data analysis is considered the core of earthquake prediction and despite evident failure of this method, some geologists reply with arrogance. It’s a hot debate, with a lot at stake. In the last 100 years, more than 2 million people lost their lives in an earthquake.
This Leonardo Film production is an international co-production of WDR/ARTE, PTS (Taiwan), LIC China and with the support of nordmedia GmbH in Lower Saxony and Bremen.
HD 1080 50i
52 mins
Delivery Feburary 2012