London: A new study has suggested ants are able to sense earthquakes before the Earth even lightly shudders.
Germany researchers discovered the red wood ants prefer to build their colonies along active faults, fractures where the Earth ruptures, Daily Mail reported.
The ants` behaviour significantly changed before an earthquake above magnitude 2.0 hit the area. The behaviour did not nomalise until a day after the earthquake, said Gabriele Berberich, of the University of Duisburg-Essen, in Germany.
Berberich presented her research at the European Geosciences Union annual meeting in Vienna, LiveScience reported. Her team counted 15,000 ant mounds lining the active faults. She tracked the ants round the clock for three years between 2009 and 2012.
before retreating into their mound at night.
IANS
