00:00Animals may have a sixth sense, and no, they don't see dead people, but it may help them
00:09sense when earthquakes will strike.
00:12An international research team placed sensors on six cows, five sheep and two dogs on a
00:17farm in Italy in an earthquake-prone area.
00:20They studied their movement over several months and found they were unusually restless up
00:24to 20 hours before earthquakes.
00:27Animals closer to the quake's epicenter started behaving unusually earlier than those that
00:32weren't.
00:33Though the team says it's still unclear how their sixth sense works, they have a few ideas.
00:38Researchers think they may be able to sense earthquakes by picking up the air's ionization
00:43caused by large rock pressures in earthquake zones with their fur.
00:47Or it's possible animals can smell gases released from quartz crystals before an earthquake.
00:52Today, predicting when and where earthquakes will happen is still a challenge.
00:56However, researchers say studying a big number of animals in different regions around the
01:00world could provide further clues.
01:02The study was published in the Ethology International Journal of Behavioral Biology.
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