January 13, 2010

Dog senses Arcata earthquake seconds before it happens


This is a remarkable video that clearly shows a dog reacting to an earthquake just seconds before it hits.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Probably heard it on frequencies that humans can't pick up.

admin said...

The dog starts running at :05 but you can see a guy get up and start running at :08, also before everything starts shaking at :10. There's no audio, but it's entirely possible that there was some rumbling beforehand, which was even detectable to humans. The dog just had faster reflexes than the person. Either that or like Michael said, the rumbling was outside the detectable range for people at :05 and came into detectable range at :08.

The anecdotes that we hear about animals running for the hills during the Indian Ocean tsunami were probably a similar phenomenon: some animals could hear the wave minutes beforehand, while it was still way out at sea.

Either way, you know people will misuse information like this to claim that animals have some kind of magical intuitions that humans lack. :)

George said...

It's also possible that the man running at :08 got up to see what the dog was flipping out about.

Niki said...

If you look at 0:49, you will see that there was quite a noticeable quake before the main one at 0:54.

I think that woke the dog up, or maybe the sound fractions of a second before the initial small quake.

Fantomas said...

The dog looks to the floor sensing something at 0.03 and runs at 0.04. Later at 0.04, the guy's chair starts moving, in reaction to the dog or the quake we don't know. The first visible quake movement I can find is the top draw of the cabinet in the bottom left starting to open at 0.06, which is also when the guy gets up from his chair. By the time we see the guy at 0.08 he's definitely not interested in the dog.

It's inconclusive as to when the guy first sensed the quake, he could have felt it before the dog for all we can tell, but just didn't have as quick a flight reaction to it as the dog. He was definitely up and moving before the violent shaking started anyway.

Richard said...

It seems the two video feeds review pretty much the same period. If you notice the camera time (assuming the time is synced reasonably) in the first video, the dog moves at 17:21:38. At that same time, in the second video, the lights are already shaking. It probably just wasn't as noticeable in the part of the building we were initially looking at...

Richard said...

In regards to the camera times syncing up: the lights flash in the office at roughly the same time in both videos and the second video feed dies right when the lights go out in the first. Assuming we're looking at the same office, it seems the time stamps must be common between them.

Brian said...

The camera times are in sync. Major tremor starts at 17:21:43 in both views (0:09 and 0:54) and the lights go out in the first one at 17:21:48 (0:13) which is the same time that the second camera cuts out (0:58)

There was a tremor that caused the dog to get up. It's obvious in the second camera view, but not as much in the first camera view. At 17:21:38 the first time (0:04 seconds into the video) the dog gets up and runs away. At that same instant (17:21:38 or 0:49 seconds into the video) the second camera shakes and dust flies by the lens. The first tremor wasn't as bad as the major one (17:21:43, 0:09/0:54) , but that's what caused the dog to run (and the guy to get out of his chair (you can see the chair move at 17:21:39/0:05).