
Tracking animals from space could predict earthquakes on the ground - jonbaer
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/wild-tracking-animals-space-could-predict-earthquakes-ground-ncna903311
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_ph_
It is faszinating and funny that we haven't figured out how animals sense
upcoming earthquakes and cannot reproduce that, but modern technology might
give us the ability to observe animals well enough to get the earthquake
warnings from them.

On the other side, if this works out, there is a good chance to use the gained
observation data to make progress in u nderstanding the animals capabilites
and behavior.

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taeric
Be fair, though. Individual animals are likely terrible at predicting stuff
like this. In aggregate, they are probably ok. Not perfect, mind. Just ok.

It isn't like animals don't have a history of also getting killed in
earthquakes or other natural disasters.

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SirLuxuryYacht
Earthquake "prediction" is an attractive prospect though widely accepted to be
impossible (barring some neutrino/quantum/more-advanced/$ geophysics).
"Forecasting" is the more apt term. At any rate, this and other articles are
stirring up buzz using just one of many products coming from this experiment,
and IMO the least exciting simply because of how unlikely success will be.

ICARUS will primarily help us understand

• "the ontogeny of behavioral and movement traits of animals in the wild, and

• the selection acting on individuals in the wild (i.e., where, why and when
do individuals die)"

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fludlight
What are these animals sensing prior to earthquakes? Hyperlocal changes in the
earth's magnetic field?

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bayesian_horse
It could be a form of infrasound, and maybe in a pattern which isn't readily
detected by seismographs.

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SirLuxuryYacht
Seismometers have precision on the order of ppb. Considering that there is no
acoustic energy released prior to an earthquake, an infrasound precursor is
extremely unlikely and something that seismologists would have already
characterized.

~~~
hashmap
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5615297/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5615297/)

This study says earthquake precursor movements send signals into the
ionosphere, that cause other signals to propagate to earth, which can make
objects vibrate audibly, minutes or possibly hours before the main shock. It
argues this may be what animals are hearing. Rube Goldberg if true.

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jonbaer
[https://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/animal_eqs.php](https://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/animal_eqs.php)

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bayesian_horse
Not going to happen. Heart rates (and all other parameters) vary for all sorts
of reasons. To detect a change in these parameters in a period of hours, you'd
have to have a really large number of animals. You can just picture an army of
humans tagging and replacing Millions of tags on all sorts of animals all
around the world.

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sandworm101
But maybe on cattle? Telemetry from livestock is either a thing now, or will
be in the near future. Doesn't seem like much of a stretch to use that data
for all sorts of purposes.

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bayesian_horse
Totally possible. I doubt it will ultimately work, because it will be hard to
have enough tagged cattle in proximity to enough actual earthquakes. But it
would give an answer to the question what behavioral parameters might change
before earth quakes.

It's still possible this is just an illusion.

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trumped
why not go at the source of the signal?

~~~
taeric
That is almost certainly the end goal. But, if we already knew the signal,
there wouldn't be a story here.

