People cling to the idea that animals in the field can predict earthquakes, but predictions and predictions say they are not.

Earthquakes are frightening events that strike without warning. But some believe that there is a previous warning system: animals.

Over the centuries, some people have seen the sight of animals migrating to the hills or leaving their holes in weeks, days or hours before they hit earthquakes.

But does this belief have any scientific basis?

Michael Blanpied, assistant coordinator of the US Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program, says it is true that animals can sense earthquakes, usually minutes before humans.

It was founded by the US Congress in 1977, a program that monitors and reports on earthquakes, assesses the effects and risks of earthquakes, and looks for their causes and effects.

He added that this interaction is not a specific gift to predict when and where the earthquake is likely to hit.

The researchers presented theories that some creatures have the ability to sense signals humans can not, such as the light tilt of the earth, changes in groundwater, electric and magnetic fields.

He added that seismologists would like to have a pre-earthquake warning system, but the animals obviously do not have the answer.

"The earliest possible time for a major earthquake is another small one," he says.

But even knowing that some small earthquakes may generate other large is not a very useful factor.

Because one earthquake does not give scientists the ability to know the exact time remaining for the next earthquake, or even where the focus will be.

Earthquake tracking is not an easy task. Millions of years on Earth, most of those earthquakes have barely been observed.

Scientists have a close association with the belief that animals know that there is a dying will happen on the way.

Throughout history - beginning with ancient Greece - animals were observed fleeing from the area where the earthquake would occur. However, the observations were made too late after the earthquake.

Blanid added that it is difficult to document changes in animal behavior before the earthquake, especially if the earthquake occurs without warning.

The United States Geological Survey of the United States (USGS) program in the late 1970s ensures continued monitoring of test mice in southern California to see if there is a sudden or variable activity before the earthquake.

Unfortunately, there were no earthquakes during the study period.

Jim Berkland, a geologist in the San Francisco Bay Area, made a name for himself by accurately predicting the Loma Prieta in 1989 in northern California.

His prediction was based partly on combing classified ads for local newspapers, which he said proved more ordinary pets were missing within a week or so before a 6.9-magnitude earthquake.

Berkland was not the only one who claimed that loss of pets indicated something was about to happen.

The United States Geological Survey of Seismic Sciences (USGS) believes that the theory of animal loss, however, is illogical and a realistic response to the 1988 study refutes its claim.

Blanid says the agency does not reject the possibility of animal activity in anticipation.

The only problem is that they have not received enough funding for such studies and do not seem to intend to fund them at their own expense on the agency's Web site, indicating that the 2000 study by seismologist Joseph Kirshink, who suggested that the fight or flight of animals evolved over thousands Years to become a kind of early warning system for earthquakes.

He also suggested ways to study how animals interact with potential impacts of earthquakes, such as simple tilt of the earth, change of groundwater or electric and magnetic fields.

Most people believe that animals with a sense of earthquakes before they occur point to a work done by Friedman Freund, a senior research scientist at the non-profit SETI Institute (looking for extraterrestrial life).

It has been assumed for decades that continuous pressures in the earth's crust before the earthquake caused major changes in magnetic fields, which animals can sense.

Blanid said that these theories have been put forward and criticized constantly, because rapid changes will not be expected before the earthquake, and because such changes have not been observed or recorded outside the Freeond Laboratory.

In 2015, he and research assistants published a study showing that animals in Peru's Yanachaga National Park had essentially disappeared in the weeks before the 7.0 earthquake in the region in 2011.

Animals are able to detect the first seismic wave - the P-wave or the pressure wave, which reaches before the wave X or the second wave or vibration.

It explains very much why the animals were seen raking the ground with interest, or acting freely or in action before the ground began to vibrate.

As he also said, some animals - such as elephants - can recognize low-frequency sound waves and light tremors that precede the main and which humans can not perceive at all.

Just before the 5.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Washington in 2011, some animals at the Smithsonian Institution's National Zoo caused a quarrel between each other, says Kenton Cairns, a park biologist.

Of these animals, lemurs were a species of monkeys, which began to scream for about 15 minutes before the guards felt the earthquake. The guards completed their activity after the end of the conflict.

Lemuras - small heads of Madagascar - make very loud sounds when they are angry, and can make their complaint clear several times a day, says Kearns.

Which means that it is unlikely to know if the reason is that they may have sensed an earthquake about to happen or that something else has disturbed them by accident, he says.

So why do people cling to the idea that animals have the ability to predict? Blanid says he thinks people feel comfortable thinking that there will be something that will make earthquakes predictable.