Earthquake Prediction by Animals: Evolution and Sensory Perception

Earthquake Prediction by Animals: Evolution and Sensory Perception

Animals living within seismically active regions are subjected episodically to intense ground shaking that can kill individuals through burrow collapse, egg destruction, and tsunami action. Although anecdotal and retrospective reports of animal behavior suggest that although many organisms may be able to detect an impending seismic event, no plausible scenario has been presented yet through whi...

Magnetoreception and Electromagnetic Field Effects: Sensory Perception of the Geomagnetic Field in Animals and Humans

This chapter reviews numerous discoveries that have been made during the past 15 years concerning the ability of living organisms to respond to the geomagnetic field. These include (1) the magnetotactic response of bacteria and protozoans, (2) magnetic effects on homing and navigational behavior by migrating animals, (3) the discovery of magnetically influenced signals in nerve fibers from the ...

Space Perception by Visuokinesthetic Prediction

Rethinking Earthquake Prediction

We re-examine and summarize what is now possible in predicting earthquakes, what might be accomplished (and hence might be possible in the next few decades) and what types of predictions appear to be inherently impossible based on our understanding of earthquakes as complex phenomena. We take predictions to involve a variety of time scales from seconds to a few decades. Earthquake warnings and ...

Sensory biology. Evolution of sweet taste perception in hummingbirds by transformation of the ancestral umami receptor.

Sensory systems define an animal's capacity for perception and can evolve to promote survival in new environmental niches. We have uncovered a noncanonical mechanism for sweet taste perception that evolved in hummingbirds since their divergence from insectivorous swifts, their closest relatives. We observed the widespread absence in birds of an essential subunit (T1R2) of the only known vertebr...