How do dogs sense earthquakes?

[Originally from Catholic Scientist]How do dogs sense earthquakes?A quick Google search says that we don't know. Any ideas?Edited by Percy, : Change title.Edited by Percy, : Add note at top.

I'm taking it as an invitation to actually debate it. Some people prolly think it's doggie ESP, let's Teeach the CONtroversy. We had a lot of fun spring up in Precognition Causality Quantum Theory and Mysticism didn't we?In general I side with Larni. Message 151I'm judging purely from personal experience of an anecdotal nature though. I have been in very few tectonic events, all tremors. In the first one, my dog became frantic a minute or more before it happened. He wailed a bit while hiding under a heavy couch. We were not in an area with regular seismic activity, and when it began I didn't realize what was happening at first. It was similar to the feeling one got when a nearby train passed through, but a small oven sitting on a mini-bar began to act like the wireless phones on "vibrate" sometimes do, not just shaking but also traveling around a bit like an ice-skater. Then it subsided, my puppy come out and I gave him some chow and told him he was a Good Dog and it was All Right.In the second one involving dogs, I was in San Francisco and saw a dog behaving thusly. I was already alert to the earthquake concept due to my location, and as I looked around I also saw people getting that look on their face that people get watching Babylon 5 or early episodes of Star Trek:The Next Generation, which overuse infrasonics as a way of stimulating emotion. I can't give more detail about animal and human reactions, as I found myself skipping downhill at about 30 mph toward open ground. Things did fall down, mostly loose fixtures, but not buildings, no casualties.The only other relevant experience was in Los Angeles. I was browsing at a street-corner vendor stand when the owner's family dog went to whining and tugging at its leash. The vendor shouted "Fiaz! the cords, the cords!" while tugging down Bungi straps and grabbing his cash drawer. Little Fiaz (sp?) secured the straps on the other side, started trying to rake the jewelry together. I was spinning around, seeing no clear route to freedom, and he said "Leave it!" and tugged me by the collar. The dog has gotten loud at this point and they snatched his leash loose, breaking something in the process. We all went halfway down into the subway. I went to go on down, but Azi (sp?), the gentleman herding us, said "No, no! The train!" So we waited. Things shook, people fell down. No casualties, minor property damage. A feeling like chewing on tinfoil or scraping a chalkboard well before it really shook, but well after the dog started signalling.Make me smarter? I also certainly don't discount this viewpoint from Wounded King. Message 2

I have been in several earthquakes and they are rarely, in my experience, sudden jolts of movement going from totally still to totally shaking.Every quake I have experienced has been a build up of motion to full magnitude then a drop off followed by after shocks.It's plausible that the dogs can hear something, but I suspect that if you are on all fours with no shoes on (or in the case of the video, actually laying down on the floor) you are going to sense the minor start of the movement before people who are standing up.Notice also that the fat guy starts running for the door before anything on screen starts shaking.Edited by Nuggin, : No reason given.

There was a series of small quakes (< or = magnitude 4.0) in my town last year. This series spread over a couple of months. I was sitting in the living room with my dog lying on the floor for two quakes, and did not notice that my dog was aware in advance. The dog's reaction when the quakes struck was to bark at them. Then the biggest quake, a 4.0, struck, and the dog was terrified from then on of the smallest quake. In fact he is still terrified today when strong winds make the house creak, the way it creaked during a quake.

I've got two dogs which don't seem to notice quakes even as they are happening

Yeah, this is interesting. I don't know if it covers everything, there's a range of motion. The dog in LA certainly was in charge of reporting seismic activity, and received a lot of praise for doing so. Nor was it much earlier than we all started feeling it start up. The dog I noticed in SF may well have had similar training. My puppy in my first story had no such reinforcement though. He specifically acted the same way he did during thunderstorms. This gives me the idea that he was hearing loud noises and/or feeling something and/or smelling something that frightened him, that we were ignoring.So let's check our facts. Your dogs that ignore earthquakes, do they have any responsibilities, or are they basically just fixtures? Do you praise them for alerting you to things their enhanced senses tell them, or do you tell them to shut up? How do they behave during thunderstorms and other loud uncanny events?

I rewatched the video again.The dog freaks at about second 4. The man in the chair (can't see him, but can see the chair) gets up at second 5 and everything really starts to move around second 7.Given that, it doesn't seem like this dog is anything more than a second to a second and a half ahead of the guy sitting in the chair on rollers.Now, this is a big quake, but I can tell you, I've been through tiny ones in a chair and didn't even notice because I wasn't touching the floor.In all likelihood this is just an animal lying down, freaking out and reacting faster than the guy who isn't touching the floor at all.Not really anything to get excited about