The behaviour of common toads in the L’Aquila area changed dramatically in the days leading up to last April’s earthquake, reports Dr Rachel Grant of Britain’s Open University in the Journal of Zoology. Grant and her team were studying the toads in March and April 2009 when, five days before the earthquake, the male toads abandoned their spawning site, which is unusual before spawning is complete. Three days before the quake there were no toads at all at the site at San Ruffino Lake, 74 kilometres from the epicentre of the quake.
How the toads sensed that something was amiss is not known but it is thought that they were reacting to changes in the ionosphere, water activity or even changes in the air. Grant says the toads started to return the day after the quake but that it took ten days for them all to come back.
The theory that animals can sense impending natural disaster is as old as history itself: from the cats of Pompeii who reputedly behaved strangely for several days before Vesuvius erupted to the thousands of toads who moved across a bridge in Taizhou [Jiangsu Province] in China, two days before the massive earthquake that struck Sichuan Province in May 2008. Grant’s study, however, is the first to document animal behaviour before, during and after a quake.
