Seconds before our bomb shelter alert started my dogs came to paw on the front door to be let inside. It’s as if they know something is coming before we do. “There are many anecdotes about animals being able to foresee disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, but hardly any systematic studies,” says Martin Wikelski, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell and professor at the University of Konstanz. “But scientists in this field don’t have it easy, either,” he grumbles. “One can quickly be dismissed as a sort of diviner.”

Related: goats are fire-fighting friends

He would like to test whether animals can be used as biological early-warning systems for natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. He’s even had his idea patented: the project, which he submitted to the European Patent Office with the support of the technology transfer company Max Planck Innovation, is called DAMN (Disaster Alert Mediation using Nature). Insurance companies have already expressed interest.

He tells the story of Rome and that people were lying peacefully in their beds as danger approached from the north. The Celts were marching toward the city, threatening to destroy it. The geese woke sleeping inhabitants with their loud quacking and thus saved the Capitoline.

Today, every guide book on Rome includes the story of the vigilant geese, but this story is by no means the only example of animals prophesying impending doom. Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder, who died when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, reported that birds become restless before earthquakes. In modern times, too, we’ve seen time and again animals behaving strangely before natural disasters – and such diverse species as elephants, dogs, snakes, toads, fish, bees and even ants.

In February 1975, near the Chinese metropolis of Haicheng, numerous snakes were seen that had slithered out of their hideaways in the middle of winter and frozen to death in the snow. Shortly thereafter, the city was rocked by earth tremors with a magnitude of 7.3. The residents were evacuated in time due in no small part to the reptiles’ abnormal behavior.

Related: earthquake equipment can predict conflict an

In March 2009, at San Ruffino Lake in Italy’s Abruzzo region, the toads that are normally found here in great numbers suddenly disappeared in the middle of the spawning season. A few days later, an earthquake destroyed the nearby town of L’Aquila.

“When animals go crazy, run away from the sea and go to the highlands,” advises an Indonesian children’s song. It comes from Simeulue island, off the coast of Sumatra, close to the epicenter of the quake. Because the inhabitants had learned from their ancestors to correctly interpret the behavior of chickens and water buffalo, they were able to save themselves from the tsunami. Despite enormous property damage, there were only a few deaths on Simeulue.

Wikelski records animal migrations and behaviors around the globe. His focus isn’t restricted to migratory birds, but includes a broad range of wildlife. Using radio transmitters, he tracks storks on their way from Europe to Africa, monarch butterflies on their journey from Canada to Mexico, and the wanderings of rodents that disseminate seeds in the South American rainforest.

The small tachographs the scientist uses for this can not only report the exact GPS coordinates of the wearer, but also measure acceleration in different directions. This enables the researchers to draw conclusions about the animal’s behavior.

“This technology allows us to conduct our observations around the clock,” says Wikelski. “If we attach transmitters to different animals in regions prone to natural disasters and record their behavior, we can subsequently find out which animals would have redicted, for example, a volcanic eruption or an earthquake.”

Wikelski and his colleagues launched an unusual field trial in April 2011. “If we want to study how animals behave before a volcanic eruption or an earthquake, we can’t do it in the lab,” the researcher explains. “We have to actually wait for such an event to occur.”

Although Etna is one of the best researched volcanos in the world, it has not yet been possible to reliably predict such events over the long term – especially as regards the intensity of the eruption. Martin Wikelski and his colleagues thus wanted to find out whether there are animals that can do this better.

In their search for suitable candidates, the scientists also turned to ancient myths for inspiration: “Originally, we really did consider geese,” recalls Wikel ski. “Then we asked locals who have been living with their animals at the foot of Mount Etna for generations. They said: Forget the geese, use goats instead!”

The people in the region knew their animals extremely well and thus knew that they have a keen instinct for impending natural phenomena. “A shepherd then promptly made eight goats available to us,” reports the behavioral scientist.

Most of the time, the animals live in small herds on the slopes of the volcano. They are driven into the valley only twice each year. The scientists used one such opportunity to fit the goats with transmitter collars in place of the bells they would normally get. Weighing 390 grams, the devices, which Wikelski had specially produced for the experiment, record both the exact GPS position and the acceleration on three axes and allow the data to be read via a local radio network.

Back home on their computer, the researchers can access the data and, using special software, visualize the movement patterns and the behavior of the goats on the monitor.

Whether the animals sleep, eat, run or jump over the lava rocks – each of these behaviors produces a characteristic acceleration pattern.

They confirmed that Wikelski’s idea actually worked: whenever a major eruption was imminent, the animals were already perturbed hours before, running up and down or hiding under bushes and trees when they had the opportunity.

The International Space Station is about to receive a small antenna to carry out the work to try and measure and understand nature’s 6th sense.

::ICARUS

(This article was summarized from an article produced by the Max Planck Institute for ICARUS)

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A new study has found that vultures, much like humans, experience changes in movement habits and social relationships as they age. Young vultures frequently move between roosting sites and hang out a lot with their friends. During adolescence, they spend about half their nights at a permanent site at home and the other half at other sites.

In old age, however, vultures scale back on socializing, preferring to “stay home.”

The study followed 142 Eurasian Griffon Vultures (Gyps fulvus) and is among the first to shed light on the behavioral changes in aging animals in the wild.

Read related: captive vultures can rewild

The researchers utilized a database accumulated over 15 years from GPS devices attached to 142 vultures that tracked them for periods of up to 12 years. The vulture, a social bird, sleeps in roosts on cliffs. By cross-referencing the vultures’ ages with the GPS data on their roosting sites, the researchers discovered that as the vultures aged, they increasingly preferred to stay at the same roosting site.

The study was led by Marta Acácio at Tel Aviv University and Prof. Noa Pinter-Wollman of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The findings were published in the prestigious journal PNAS.

“Vultures are a locally endangered species in Israel, with only about 200 individual vultures remaining. They are closely monitored to determine the best possible conservation methods. We thought about what else could be gleaned from the extensive database we have accumulated over the years and agreed it would be interesting to explore how vultures age,” says Spiegel.

Read more: The old Iranian cemetery Towers of Silence where people are eaten by vultures

“Tracking the same individuals in the wild over many years is often very challenging, but the transmitters we use to monitor the population provided us with a rare opportunity to observe the aging process in vultures specifically and in animals generally.

It turns out that aging vultures behave a bit like humans and are more inclined to stay at home. When they are young, vultures like to explore new sites and frequently move between places; the likelihood that a young vulture will sleep at the same site two nights in a row is low.

When they reach adolescence at the age of five, this behavior stabilizes, and as adults they spend 50 percent of their nights at the same site and the other 50 percent at other sites. When they are old, from the age of 10 onwards, they no longer have the energy to be “out and about,” and return consistently to the same site.

Read more: all about birds of the Middle East

According to Spiegel, these fascinating findings on the aging of birds also have very practical implications for conservation efforts. “This new study can help us better protect vultures’ roosting sites in the wild. Additionally, we have now seen that older vultures have fewer social connections, which can help us to prevent poisoning. The transmitters are connected to a system that sends an alert to the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and to us by phone, if the vulture is not moving or has landed in a dangerous place, indicating that it may have been poisoned. Unfortunately, this happens frequently.

The danger arises when a vulture descends on a poisoned goat carcass, not knowing that a farmer has poisoned the carcass in order to kill stray dogs. Being social birds, vultures do not come down alone, leading to the risk of dozens of vultures dying at once. Understanding how wide the poisoned vulture’s social circle is will significantly help in mitigating the damage.”

It is important to note that vultures play an important ecological role in the disposing of carcasses. Studies have shown that the extinction of vultures ultimately leads to the loss of human lives, due to the rise of diseases such as rabies. In India, for example, a recently published study revealed that the extinction of vultures due to poisoning resulted in the deaths of half a million people over the course of five years.

The post Old vultures are homebodies, like us appeared first on Green Prophet.

We pulled up into a barren plot of land that stretched for miles. I, and the rest of my Onward friends in my Israel internship program were utterly confused. Where were we? I remember thinking. We were quite literally in the middle of nowhere, just miles of open, dry land, the land of Israel.

Once we got off the bus we were brought into a room with tables and a board where we learned what we were here for. Project Wadi Attir, is a sustainable development organization that aims to farm through Bedouin traditions in an eco way. Fostered by The Sustainability Laboratory, the goal of this project and the other projects is to integrate sustainable practices of agriculture.

The property is located in the north Negev desert and it desires to bring back original Bedouin traditions like folk medicine that have been long forgotten from the past. Traditional Bedouin culture were nomad Arabs who farmed the land in a sustainable way. This project brings back this method of farming so that farmland is better preserved and taken care of, and this was very clear as we were taken on our tour of the property.

They showed us around the 100-acre land and showed us some of the goats and sheep. The goats are milked by hand only and we even were able to hold one of the goats. They also served us some labneh, which was goat cheese they made on-site. You can make your own labneh with our recipe here.

Hold a goat

“This whole project is to take all the tradition and knowledge the Bedouins had for thousands of years in the desert and try to use it and bring it back with the most advanced technique and technology,” said Mohammed Alnabari, one of the founders of the project.

This project was also inspired to achieve a holistic approach back to a natural way of healing. Similarly to Tavlinsky and Cafe Levinsky crafting their ingredients on site, the project produces its own herbs, dairy products, and vegetables all made sustainably through an ancient Bedouin method of cultivation, and is supposed to provide a more natural way of living.

It is also hopeful to inspire other farmland to adopt this agricultural style in order to preserve the planet and support the Bedouin community and lifestyle. You can also buy their herbs and medicinal plants in the store they have on site.

Although it may seem like this place is all designed to be ancient and hand produced, there are solar fields on site that they use to generate electricity. In addition, the goat milking facility is one of the most advanced in Israel. Each goat has an ID bracelet, which tells them a lot of information like how much milk it yielded, how much time it milked, how old she is, and information on the milk cycle. “It can milk 48 items, goats or sheep at one time,” said Alnabari on the milking process. There are 100 goats and 100 sheep being milked right now on-site, giving about 3 liters of milk and being used to produce traditional Bedouin cheese.

What was so unique about my experience at Project Wadi Attir was that there were little kids there, learning, playing, and just experiencing the culture. When we arrived, the kids were staring at us like deer in the headlights. A group of modern, flashy young adults from America standing in front of tiny children that knew nothing of our lifestyles. I wasn’t able to speak to any of these children (mostly because they didn’t speak English), but it would be so interesting to know what they are thinking and get the perspective from their side.

The children that were at Project Wadi Attir

This Project not only builds a more sustainable Bedouin farm life, but also reestablishes a Bedouin tribe that brings people together from all over the world. As international relations is a complicated subject that is so heavily discussed in the Middle East, these projects are crucial in creating stronger bonds between people because it allows us to look each other in the eye and see different perspectives.

Seeing how other people live is the first step in forming peaceful relations and also grows our intellect just to see how other people live.

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