Why do scientists dismiss the significance of evidence suggesting that animals can predict earthquakes?

I know that animals have a lot better senses then we humans do and chances are can feel things happening before we even have a clue. As for a prediction other than a few minutes before we feel them, I have never seen anything that would make me believe there is any more to it than that.

Yes they get nervous and agitated before a earthquake. Cheers

YESS it is a fact

Yes, I do but I can't explain how. There are some reports that there is little scientific evidence that animals can predict earthquakes, but all the same, I think that they can.

I'm pretty sure about it!

Pigs are good at it. Maybe because they lay in the mud.

How do we tell the difference between animals becoming nervous over an approaching quake and them becoming nervous for some other reason? There are a number of things that can make animals nervous or skittish that have nothing to do with quakes. So, people will often note the nervousness and then nothing happens. So, they don't think anything more of it. On the other hand, the animals could be come nervous and then a quake happens and people go, ah ha, and attribute the nervousness to them sensing the coming of the quake. It is possible that they did sense something indicating a quake was forthcoming. However, separating that out from the other reasons for nervousness is about the same as trying to separate out other possible indicators of an approaching quake from the meaningless background noise.

How much in advance are you talking about? Im sure some animals can feel earthquakes/notice them when we dont just because of our lifestyles (we watch TV and movies and alittle shaking might not be noticed).

can you cite a study where scientists dismiss it? I've never heard that. It's just very difficult to study. I think there's enough anecdotal evidence to suggest something is at work, something physical, not metaphysical. It took a long time before domesticated dogs were trained to use their sense of smell to aid humans in detection of many things. Perhaps in the future there can be trained for this as well. I remember a strange news piece from about a year ago about a cat who could predict people dying or something. That was weird, the doctors and nurses were baffled.

Basically the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty low, as Glenn said. We'd much rather rely on instrumentation that gives less ambiguous clues, but the problem is that we don't know all the signs to look for yet.

I remember seeing a documentary about the fact that when granite under stress cracks, it gives off detectable radio waves. I don't know if much has been done with this detection mechanism yet, though.

Yes I do and this was written about in our local paper back in California. We even noticed that our dogs would spend one evening barking all night long about 1-2 days before an earthquake. It happened 5 times and these were dogs that rarely barked ever. Some people commented on the restlessness of their horses, sometimes we might have noticed as well, though I didn't notice it every time since I wasn't looking at them all the time for that. Restlessness just isn't as noticeable as dogs barking all night lol!!!

I don't think they can actually make a prediction. They can sense things like natural disaster long before we do. Animals naturally run in the opposite direction from forest fires, earthquakes, tsunamis, and such before we have any idea as to what's about to happen.

ive heard so.
cats can. horses can. mice can.