Animals Sensed the Tsunami Coming

So I heard this after the tsunami hit, but did not believe it until I looked into it myself recently — very, very few animals were killed by the tsunami (besides people).There are articles from National Geographic News and other news sources (CNN linked above) that talk about how animals knew something was coming and all started acting strangely before the tsunami hit. It seems it was especially apparentin Sri Lanka and there are a lot of articles on this in particular. It’s really something how we think we’re so much more advanced than the other organisms on this planet, and yet they’re clearly more intuned with it than we are in some ways….

7 Responses to “Animals Sensed the Tsunami Coming”

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I bet they picked up on the vibrations from the earthquake that preceded the tsunami.

Owen - January 14th, 2005 at 6:01 am

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Which is to say, in my morning-bleary way, the animals who have lived on those shores for generations would necessarily be more sensitive to the water than humans who wall themselves off from the ocean.

Owen - January 14th, 2005 at 6:02 am

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Actually if you look at the numbers there appears to be a fewer animal deaths in most natural disasters. Not are they more in tune with nature as it were, they are also alot more likely to leave and not worry about things like houses, cars and the likes.

Gilvoro - January 14th, 2005 at 10:24 am

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I’m really not sure if it has so much to do with not worrying “about things like houses, cars and the likes” — if people knew that a natural disaster was so great that they would most likely die from it and had to leave _now_, those concerns would not matter so much. And I don’t think people had much of a warning before the tsunami hit as it was, making the whole “what to leave behind” thing not a big consideration… that and most of them didn’t have much in the way of material possessions to begin with…

Teisha - January 14th, 2005 at 12:06 pm

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But people don’t actually believe that they would immediately die in a lot of natural disaters. Is this particular disaster people were not warned so they didn’t have the option of making that choice, but whenever another hurricane is headed towards Florida there always are some nuts who stay in their house to wait out the storm. The decision to stay or go depends both on the severity of the damage if the disaster does occur and the cost of making a false positive (evacuating when the disaster doesn’t occur).

If an elephant feels a vibration which may be an earthquake and he runs inland he looses very little if he was wrong, but gains everything if he was right. However as humans have different priorities and require fairly definite knowledge before they react as they would be abandoning their territory and interrupting the way they earn their livelihood. I would be curious if different animals with different stratigies behave in different ways to natural disasters? (Elephants will run inland, but will they leave their territories? Does the behavior of the males differ from the females? etc.) If the animals had something more to loose than a few extra calories to nervous behavior would they react more like humans?

Laika - January 14th, 2005 at 6:39 pm

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Teisha,
Good point Teisha on the lack of warning.

Gilvoro - January 19th, 2005 at 4:17 pm

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I Think aminals are just born with it

landy - February 18th, 2005 at 5:18 pm

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