March 21, 2020

There is an amazing video where a dog is unquestionably noticing the pre-seismic signals of the Utah earthquake before it happens, and is reacting in a major way. However, there is a massive error in the video.

Due to copyright protections I cannot show this video, but you can go watch it yourself: Dog Senses Earthquake Try to spot the error before reading it below!

So what was the issue there? Well, I’d love to know which ‘experts’ were consulted by The Weather Channel for this story. The story suggests ultrasound and infrasound emissions by earthquakes could be heard by the dog beforehand, and while that theory does exist, the data in the peer-reviewed journals we have seen indicates that animals react based on the electromagnetic precursors to the event. Was the Utah event an ‘electroquake’? This dog sure noticed something.

Showing 8 comments
  • Michael Durfee
    Reply

    My first hypothesis was that the crust grinding and deformation resulting from the seismic activity would produce a bacon smell, which of course, would get any dog’s attention.

    However upon further investigation it appears that the “P-waves” (compression waves) from seismic activity can be detected a full 60 to 90 seconds before shaking starts. The P-waves are on the lower end of the frequency range (1-70Hz), if I’m not mistaken. According to LSU (https://www.lsu.edu/deafness/HearingRange.html) the hearing range of a dog is 67-45,000Hz. So if the P-waves were above the dog’s 67Hz threshold, the dog potentially would hear the lower frequency waves (assuming there wasn’t anything happening around the dog to drown out the noise).

    Murray, UT is less than ten miles from where the USGS put the epicenter of the quake occurring at a depth of ~12km (7.4 miles). The dog lifts it’s head at about four and half seconds into the video, which in my opinion was when it detected the initial P-wave event. Then at the end, around 12 seconds, was when it reacted to the S-waves when the shelf in the upper right corner of the frame shakes.

    • Terese Nehrbauer
      Reply

      Thank you Sir! This is edifying information, not the least of which is that I now understand what “P-waves” mean.

  • Charles
    Reply

    I think the error is that the dog was not trying to sleep in the same room as its owner, or kids.

  • FallenSun
    Reply

    Local comments from people in utah was some notice the clouds above light up green during or around the event.

  • Gaia
    Reply

    It’s well known that many animals can sense a quake before it happens. I think that before the tsunami in Indonesia some animals became very nervous before the event and tried to flee the area.

    • 5mujiks
      Reply

      Which could be why the bees were disappearing before the rollout of 5G…

  • TurboSol
    Reply

    Can’t we detect what sound waves happen before a quake then reproduce those in a lab and see if dogs pick it up? And couldn’t we also do this with electromagnatism?

  • Randrat
    Reply

    I am suspicious of the entire video. Who was zooming the camera just prior to the “quake”. Also those folks sure did awake quickly. Not sure they could have moved that fast even if they were experienced quakers. I’m giving this video a fake rating of 8 on a scale of 10.

Leave a Reply to Charles Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.