by Terrence Aym

Created on: December 06, 2011

Historically, witches have used toads in spells and shamans have used toads for magical rites…now some scientists believe the lowly toad can help predict killer earthquakes.

It's been known for hundreds of years that certain animals sense earthquakes coming. Jim Berkland, a geologist, created a system of tracking newspaper reports of missing cats and dogs to provide insight into the possibility of an approaching major earthquake. He used the animal tracking system successfully on several occasions, the most notable being the San Francisco earthquake of 1989 that he predicted weeks in advance—almost to the hour.

The Chinese too have anecdotal tales of anomalous animal behavior occurring before great earthquakes. Records show some ancient emperors tracked the behavior of certain animals to predict earthquakes and save lives.  

Perhaps the most striking example of animal earthquake prediction occurred in recent times. Just prior to the megathrust quake and catastrophic tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands in Indonesia, tens of thousands of animals fled, including elephants.

Later, quake and tsunami survivors gave eyewitness reports to the astonished news media that several days before the disaster struck animals of all species fled to higher ground. In some cases predators and prey alike like ran literally shoulder-to-shoulder escaping the approaching doom.

With so much evidence over so many years providing evidence that many types of animals can sense impending earthquakes, researchers paid attention when a colony of toads fled their normal habitat several days prior to a strong earthquake striking the Italian region during 2009.

In a case of serendipity, the toads were being studied at the time of the incident by a biologist.

Following up on the behavior of the toads—and evidence that might link the toads' actions to the earthquake two days later—biologist Rachel Grant from the UK's Open University and geophysicist-astrobiologist Friedemann Freund from NASA-SETI launched a formal scientific investigation into the possible connection.

The team worked on the hypothesis that harmonic forces—which are sometimes heard and seen by humans in the form of moans and groans from deep underground or colored lights called "earthquake lights" in the sky—create charged particles. Those particles stream out from rock strata along faultlines deep within the Earth's crust.

The scientists theorized that if such charged particles interacted

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