Ants can sense earthquakes a day in advance

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Ants-can-sense-earthquakes-a-day-in-advance/articleshow/19514232.cms

by greenyoda • 13 years ago

37 18 13 years ago

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

thirsteh• 13 years ago

If backed up, this would be huge. Seismologists don't really stand a chance right now.

dchichkov• 13 years ago

I'm curious, can they use these 'magneto-receptor cells' for other things? Like predicting stock market moves?

No. Seriously. They've used 5 data points in the research. Five. Calling that a 'possible correlation' is just calling for trouble.

Here is a link to the original article. http://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/3/1/63/pdf

brianobush• 13 years ago

Call it a pilot study and go ask for funding. Seriously, if a specific behavior can be reproduced five times in a row that is pretty indicative that something is happening. Of course, uncovering the root cause is going to be quite hard.

ricardobeat• 13 years ago

Well, they observed them for three years. There is probably something to it.

uvdiv• 13 years ago

They seem to only have one data point (2009-09-10).

brownbat• 13 years ago

Funny enough, I was just listening to the bit on ant intelligence from Radiolab:

http://www.radiolab.org/2007/aug/14/

tl;dl - Longtime ant researcher is resigned to the fact _individual_ ants are incredibly stupid and ineffective, sometimes just carrying a stick back and forth for days. But in colonies - somehow brilliance can emerge. They'll can predict major thunderstorms well enough in advance to build defensive walls around the entrance to their colony to direct floods around it.

georgemcbay• 13 years ago

In related news, Italy has started shipping ants off to prison for failing to report earthquakes prior to their occurrence.

e40• 13 years ago

I'm really starting to dislike the number of snarky comments on HN. I used to love the fact that I never saw them. They have become much more common recently. In flux of new users? georgemcbay isn't, but why the increase?? It's why I don't read comments on reddit and why I always liked reading them here. <sigh>

cynwoody• 13 years ago

Truth is an absolute defense to a charge of snark.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/opinion/a-failed-earthquak...

zerr• 13 years ago

Real innocent people are jailed. I don't mind we to be reminded about this, no matter how many times.

brador• 13 years ago

The Twitter Python lady incident led to a high number of Redditors coming to HN. They liked the deep content here and many decided to stay, not yet understanding the rules.

weirdcat• 13 years ago

My thoughts exactly. I wish there was a way to filter them out other than downvoting. Something like a "flag as non-constructive" button with a corresponding settings entry, allowing to either not show them at all or change the display style so that they could be skimmed through quickly.

I personally come to HN to learn new things, not to participate in witty banter.

jpxxx2• 13 years ago

This overseas reblog of a pop science blog which co-blogged a piece from @beckyoskin working for a blogring does not pass the smell test. At the very least, the headline is garbage.

There is no link to the source (here: http://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/3/1/63/pdf), no supporting material presented, it makes some odd claims starting with "ants prefer to live on active faults" (this paper says nothing about that - it's talking about ants that happen to be found in a geologically interesting faulting area) and ends up with "ants can predict earthquakes". Which then goes up to the headline.

Stop stop stop stop stop.

This paper is a decent exploration of performing day+night video analysis to describe above-ground ant behavior over large periods. The rest of it seems reaching and improbable, but I don't have the background to comment on any of the math or geology presented.

jpxxx2• 13 years ago

Ok, nevermind on the siting bit, the paper is drafting on her PHD thesis which presumably supports the argument that these ants mounds correlate with faults.

ankitml• 13 years ago

Stop posting stuff from Times of India, this tabloid has one of the least thoughtful papers of the country! If by chance you find a good journalism piece in this tabloid, it is mostly lifted from somewhere else.

darwinGod• 13 years ago

:-/ Exactly. TOI (Times of India), is missing an adjective in the beginning. It really is: (Garbage) Times of India.

It really is the last place on Earth I would hope to read any decent article on Science/Tech.

However it truly is cutting edge,if anybody wants to find out who was the latest Bollywood "celebrity" that got caught because of drunken driving.

Ants can sense earthquakes a day in advance

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