It’s Official, Toads Can Predict Earthquakes
Italian toads can apparently sense earthquakes like the earthquake that struck L’Aquila on April 6th, 2009. We know this because Dr Rachel Grant of the UK’s Open University was studying a toad population at San Ruffino Lake, around 74km from the quake’s epicenter at the time. What she found was interesting. Five days before the quake, the number of common males in the breeding colony dropped by 96 percent. If that wasn’t enough, most breeding pairs and males fled three days before the event. Something was alerting the toads to the impending quake.
So the evidence was circumstantial, but strong. Grant’s findings suggested that toads may be able to sense quakes by their pre-seismic cues, like the release of gases and charged particles, telling them that they need to find higher ground. This led to a further investigation, this time with the help of NASA, and charged particles do in fact appear to be the culprit.