To animals, ground vibrations mean more than a stampede
Mandara could feel that trouble was coming. Seconds before the earthquake struck, she grabbed her baby and fled to the highest place that she could find in her enclosure, seeking safety for them both.
Mandara is a gorilla at the National Zoo. According to zookeepers, she reacted approximately three seconds before the 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit Virginia Aug. 23rd.
The elephants were in on it, too. Shanthi, a relatively quiet elephant at the National Zoo, was heard blowing her trunk seconds before the quake. This is rare for her. She, and another elephant Ambika, then extended their trunks, perked up their ears, and bent their tails – all signs that something was wrong.
Elephants naturally feel for the vibrations coming from below their feet. Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell, a biologist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, theorized in 1992 that elephants can communicate up to twenty miles by making vibrations directed at the ground. She created this theory while studying elephants at Namibia’s Etosha National Park. Afterward, she spent a decade collecting evidence and conducting experiments to support it. Researchers found that elephants have special sensors in their feet and trunk, meissner and pascinian corpuscles, which detect these vibrations.
Feeling and sending messages this way is called infrasonic communication, according to Bob Langston, an Interpretive Specialist at the North Carolina Zoo. This may be the reason why elephants feel the vibrations from earthquakes before humans. “Simply liken this to finding yourself in a place where you hear sounds that make no sense or are not discernable,” says Langston. If elephants feel this unknown vibration, they may react and leave the area.
The National Zoo’s animals are not the only documented case where animals have reacted prior to a disaster. The 9.1 magnitude earthquake that hit Sri Lanka in 2004 was an even greater mystery to observers. More than 24,000 human lives were taken by the tsunami that followed the quake, but there isn’t any evidence of a large amount of animal deaths. The water flooded two miles inland, directly into the Yala National Park, which is the country’s biggest wildlife reserve housing hundreds of wild elephants and other various wild animals. Out of all of these creatures, only two water buffalo died. Sixty human visitors at the park that day were found dead after the waves washed away.
Not all scientists agree with these theories of why animals appeared to react before earthquakes. In an interview with Odyssey, Matthew van Lierop, an animal’s behavior scientist at the Johannesburg Zoo, says that there may be observations of animal’s reactions, but he makes it clear that nothing has been proven.
Jane Randall, a biologist at San Francisco State University, takes O’Connell-Rodwell’s theory a bit further. She says that it is common for different species of animals to communicate via vibrations, including animals such as rodents and deer. She even states that humans once communicated this way through practices such as drumming dances and vibrating drums. Then modern forms of exchanging messages came and this type of communication has been forgotten.
Wild animals do not have this luxury. They still need to rely on their natural instincts to feel when danger is coming. And it seems to be working for them thus far.
The article ’16-Foot-Python Killed in Florida; Deer Found in Stomach’ proved to me that snakes can easily eat animals whole who are much bigger than them, with no struggle on their part. A Burmese Python in the Everglades was found digesting a 76-pound deer, expanding its stomach to just over 44 inches. Apparently the female snake stalked its prey, seized it when it walked by and crushed it to death before swallowing it. The snake was found and shot shortly after its last meal. 
