5 Fascinating Facts About Earthquake: Can Animals Predict Them?

Natural disasters of Mother Nature that shake Earth's surface each time tectonic plates -  fractured pieces of its outer shell slide against, under, or over each other -  this makes us remember that we inhabit a dynamic planet.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimation, as many as 20,000 quakes rattle the globe every year. But despite their fairly constant occurrence, earthquakes require serious attention. Here are 5 fascinating facts that give an illustration of how remarkable earthquakes can be.

(Photo : Getty Images)

Earthquakes Have the Ability to Move in Slow-Motion

All earthquakes are not threatening bursts of destruction that kick off and stop in just seconds. Slow quakes, or "slow-slip" events as named, discharge such little amounts of restrained seismic energy at a time, that their earthquakes persist from several days to several weeks anywhere it occurs.

Animals Sense Earthquakes Minutes to Days Before They Take Place

As per the USGS, animals are capable of predicting earthquakes - meaning, they can't give specifics that have to do with when a quake will happen, or where its epicenter will be located. But thanks to animal's finely-tuned senses, they can detect an earthquake when it is still at its earliest stages.

For instance, there is this believe that they can detect the primary wave's (P-waves) arrival, which brings about a parallel, back-and-forth movement and comes before secondary waves (S-waves), which shakes up and down. 

A study on animal behavior and earthquakes discovered that a colony of toads left their mating location three days before a 2009 magnitude 6.3 earthquake hit  L'Aquila, Italy. 

Also Read: Magnitude 5.2 Earthquake Struck Hawaii's Big Island, No Tsunami Warning Raised

Earthquakes Can Generate Lightning

In rare instances, luminous phenomena, both balls of light, steady glows, and streamers, have been connected to earthquakes.

As per eyewitness reports, these earthquake lights - like the blue light flashes gotten on camera when magnitude 8.0 quake hit Peru on the 15th of Aug. 2007 - emerged just prior to the rupturing of the fault and also during the vibrating period. Earthquake lights is still a mystery to scientists, although they kept on exploring its causes.

An Earthquake Moved Mt. Everest More Than One Inch

During 2015 M7.8 Nepalese earthquake, the movement of the fault and a series of related landslides truly moved Mt. Everest 1.2 inches to the southwest of where it was previously standing! Because of geological happenings, Everest naturally propels around 1.6 inches northwestward; so the Nepalese earthquake set the mountain back by a year journey.

(Photo : Getty Images)

Earthquakes Can Shorten the Length of a Day

As per scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the 2011 9.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Japan was so serious, it altered the distribution of Earth's mass. As a result, the earthquake made our planet rotate somewhat faster, which in turn shortened the length of a day by 1.8 microseconds.

Related Article: Earthquake Swarm Shakes Up California's New Year; Is There Cause for Alarm?

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