 A Living Earthquake Predictor
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June 26, 2003 — Japanese researchers said Wednesday they have proved mice act strangely after being exposed to electromagnetism similar to that often monitored ahead of a big earthquake.
In their experiments, researchers exposed mice to low levels of electromagnetism, which people cannot feel, said Takeshi Yagi, professor at Osaka University in western Japan.
"The mice then became unstable and ran around inside the cage, scratched their faces and stuck their heads into sawdust in the cage," Yagi said.
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"We first observed unusual movement by mice kept in our laboratory eight years ago, the day before the Kobe earthquake," Yagi said.
The earthquake, measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale, struck the western Japanese city of Kobe, west of Osaka, on January 17, 1995, killing 6,433 people and injuring some 43,700.
"We hit a hypothesis that electromagnetic pulses generated ahead of an earthquake would disrupt a mouse's internal clock," said Yagi.
"More experiments are needed to solidify the results, but it is quite significant that it was the first time, as far as we know, to show scientific data proving animals' ability to sense signs of big earthquakes."
The theory was presented at a meeting of the Bioelectromagnetic Society (BEMS) in Honolulu.
In Japan, one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, people say some forms of life, such as rats and catfish, have a special ability to predict tremors.
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