The Animals Knew

An amazing story in the Washington Post about the strange behavior of animals at the National Zoo before last week's earthquake.

Here are some examples:
-About five to ten seconds before the quake, many of the apes, including Kyle (an orangutan) and Kojo (a Western lowland gorilla), abandoned their food and climbed to the top of the tree-like structure in the exhibit.

-About three seconds before the quake, Mandara (a gorilla) let out a shriek and collected her baby, Kibibi, and moved to the top of the tree structure as well.

-The red ruffed lemurs sounded an alarm call about 15 minutes before the quake and then again just after it occurred.

-The Zoo has a flock of 64 flamingos. Just before the quake, the birds rushed about and grouped themselves together. They remained huddled during the quake.

Here's one possible scientific explanation: An earthquake generates two types of seismic waves. The first is the relatively weak, fast-moving P wave, or primary wave. Then comes the more powerful S wave, or secondary wave, which lumbers along at a leisurely pace and heaves the ground up and down.

The first P waves would have reached Washington about 15 seconds before the S waves. The animals may have been responding to the P waves before humans noticed the ground shaking.

That's why some of the animals moved to higher ground, because they felt the earth shaking.

But that doesn't explain the lemurs sounding their alarm 15 minutes before.

Maybe that was just an aberation.

Maybe the lemurs knew.

We will never know why animals pick up on these things before we do. Unless they decide to tell us.