German insects can foresee earthquake?

London, April 14 (IANS) A new study has suggested ants are able to sense earthquakes before the Earth even lightly shudders.

Germany researchers discovered the red wood ants prefer to build their colonies along active faults, fractures where the Earth ruptures, Daily Mail reported.

The ants’ behaviour significantly changed before an earthquake above magnitude 2.0 hit the area. The behaviour did not nomalise until a day after the earthquake, said Gabriele Berberich, of the University of Duisburg-Essen, in Germany.

Berberich presented her research at the European Geosciences Union annual meeting in Vienna, LiveScience reported. Her team counted 15,000 ant mounds lining the active faults. She tracked the ants round the clock for three years between 2009 and 2012.

Researchers discovered how the ants would undergo their usual activities during the day before retreating into their mound at night.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.