Reports of abnormal animal behavior in relation to earth-quakes in Colombia

Abstract

Interactions among components of the Earth System are well exemplified by the behavior of animals around the time of earthquakes, and the abundant published data and long-standing oral tradition on animal reactions to seismicity have become hard to ignore, these are important facts that provide opportunities for cross-disciplinary research. A compilation of reports on abnormal animal behavior in relation to earthquakes in Colombia covering the period 1610-2019 was produced by a rigorous two-stage search of cases using online resources. The reports localities follow the spatial distribution of epicenters and the main tectonic features of the Colombian territory. Both, the first and second-stage searches revealed that, for 41 destructive earthquakes, there are 138 reports of animals reacting to seismicity, most of which fall into phylum Chordata, class Mammalia, order Carnivora, family Canidae, genus Canis, species C. familiaris. The first-stage search indicates that coseismic reactions of the species C. familairis, B. taurus, and E. caballus dominate over preseismic and postseismic manifestations, in contrast to results from the news media-based second-stage search, which indicates dominance of preseismic behavior. It is concluded that in this region animals have reacted persistently to earthquakes and that folklore and oral tradition deserve some degree of credibility in this phenomenon.

Keywords

• Historical earthquakes, anomalous reactions, coseismic, postseismic, preseismic, oral tradition.