A new study suggests that animals like goats and dogs could play a crucial role in predicting natural disasters, potentially saving thousands of lives each year.
Scientists have long suspected that animals possess a kind of “sixth sense” that allows them to detect subtle signals of impending events such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.
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Subscribe to the NewsletterTo test this, researchers plan to tag thousands of animals, including farm animals, and monitor their movements via satellite for signs of unusual behavior.
“Ultimately, we aim to launch a fleet of satellites to create a global observation network,” said Martin Wikelski of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany. This network would track wildlife movements and health while identifying behavioral patterns linked to natural phenomena.
Earlier research on Mount Etna in Sicily revealed that goats became restless and avoided higher pastures before an eruption. “Goats are surprisingly reliable at predicting large volcanic eruptions,” said Wikelski. “They somehow sense what’s coming, though we don’t yet understand how.”
Similarly, studies near Rome’s Abruzzo mountains found that dogs and farm animals reacted in ways that accurately predicted earthquakes 7 out of 8 times over 12 years.
If scaled globally, such monitoring could offer early warnings, giving communities more time to prepare and potentially saving countless lives.
In addition to disaster prediction, the project may also shed light on how animals adapt to environmental changes caused by global warming. “Similarly, we will be able to study animal populations to determine how they are responding to habitat changes triggered by global warming,” Wikelski added.
The research offers hope for harnessing animal behavior as a natural early-warning system, blending technology with the instincts of nature.
