Dog Senses Earthquake

It looks to me like the bearded guy jumped out of his chair at the same time the dog started to freak out. You can see the chair spin before he comes into view.

I think the dog just feels the very beginning of the quake, maybe a split second early. Beardy obviously felt something, and on the second camera the dog zips past well after the first rumble that causes the camera to shake and the glass in the big window to vibrate.

Poor dog...his panicked run just breaks my heart.

The look on Beardy's face is classic.

@laurabumblebee The dog's panicked run breaks your heart, but the people's panicked run, no comment? :)

I think it's legit-

The dog bolted away from the direction of the shaking.

My cockatiel can quakes a few seconds before I can too.
Even the wimpiest ones freak him out.

When I lived in the Arcata Bottoms we had a very good earthquake detector. The mice in the attic would come out. Basically 72-48 hours before 4+ scale earthquakes we'd start seeing mice. (They were basically trying to evacuate the house.)

I woke up before the Northridge quake, about 10 seconds before we felt the shaking. Something felt weird, there was a low bass pulse which is usually, in Los Angeles, a helicopter. In this case it was the pressure wave of the quake. Makes perfect sense that a dog can hear that.

That's right, Laura. People are more concerned with the well being of animals (the cute ones anyway) than they are concerned with the well being of people. I am also guilty of this. I think it's because we know that animals are pure and innocent. People, on the other hand, well, nine times out of ten, people suck. Maybe not Beardy. I could hang out with Beardy. He looks like a fun guy!

Beardy is a convicted rapist. HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW, STEVE!?

Also, the chair moves most likely because Beardy is wondering why the dog just went into a full sprint, then he seems to get up to see what's going on, then he realizes what's happening. So it's a good 2 - 3 seconds before that the dog realizes.

@Kev
Humans understand what's going on, animals do not understand. They just feel the shaking and run for cover. It's not like they can think "Well dang, this earthquake is nasty, better get under some shelter" It's more like *rumble rumble* "OMG WTF" *RUNS!* That's why I feel particular sympathy for them.

I hope the dog was okay.

1. the bearded guy looked like my brother
2. there was an earthquake in the bay area but I believe it was a day or so prior to the one shown, maybe a series of small one's up here (northern CA)
3. the dog only knew by seconds or sensed it by seconds
4. where did the dog go? (the people ran the opposite direction)
5. curious- why was the dog at work? did he get paid?

Not so surprising actually, the dog jumps up at 17:21:38. If you watch the second camera angle at the end of the video you can see the window start to shake at exactly this timecode

hahaha Beardy! hahaha

Terrifying! I'm so scared of earthquakes...

I like their filing system at that office. I imagine thats what the dog was there for.

The dog mayyyyybee had advance warning...but what good did it do for the dog? The dog runs off in a random direction not knowing its ass from the exit.
Early Earthquake warning vs Brains during earthquake = brains still win.

The information on this video post is completely incorrect. It is at the NEWSPAPER where I work in EUREKA CA not ARCATA. I posted the original and more at youtube.com/brianwheeler12

@-Flux The dog Sophie is actually running towards her owners desk and made a loop around it when she discovered her owner, Jessica was not at her desk she continued in a path until she found her and then proceeded to escort Jessica out the building. It can be seen in the footage on my youtube posts. youtube.com/brianwheeler12

As a geologist, I hate to burst the bubble, but what you are seeing is the dog sensing the seismic P-Waves which are compressional waves which move at twice the speed as the surface or S-Waves.

Since the P-Waves are compressional, you cannot see any visual evidence of them because the occur in a bump-like manner. The latter S-waves are longitudinal waves that you can see in the video. The time gap between the P and S Waves is how we determine the distance from the epicenter. Triangulating those various distances is how you determine the epicenter location and depth.

It's not that they can predict an earthquake, rather they can sense P-waves that many times we ignore or think are something else.

Earthquakes produce Infrasound waves that precede the earthquake by several seconds. Lots of animals can sense this and know it means trouble. Dogs have very keen sensory abilities.

Hey everyone, I am "Beardy", the guy in the video. And yes, I am a pretty fun guy and no I am not a convicted rapist. Babycakes, your brother must be very handsome. The dog is owned by a co-worker of mine. The only reason she was sitting behind me was the rest of my lunch (insert fat guy joke here) in my trash can I caught her trying get a couple minutes before the quake hit. We are in the Times-Standard newsroom in Humboldt County and if it happens again the only thing I'm doing differently is running faster.

Hahahaha! Classic! Hello Beardy, can't believe you made an appearance on the blog.

Give the dog a pat from me.

This video is showing up in Norwegian news media now, with the caption "from the French embassy in Haiti".

http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/01/14/nyheter/haiti/utenriks/9919202/

@ Mark H

Mark, what do the P-waves feel like if we weren't ignoring them? And is it any different than, say, the rumbling caused by a train passing, a diesel truck idling outside or a dozen other sensations that we routinely ignore?