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Mt St Helen: a specific question.


turak

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My question is this:

 

When Mt St. Helen erupted:... was the wildlife in the area aware that it would erupt or not?

 

In other words... how many deer or animals were killed by the eruption?

 

Did they all leave the area before the eruption? If so: then there should have been a minmal loss of life as far as the wild aninmals that lived there, and very few bodies of dead wild animals would have been found...

 

If they were not aware that Mt St. Helens would erupt... then there should have been a huge number of wild creatures found dead in the vicinity of the eruption...

 

My point is this:

 

If the animals indeed did leave the area before St Helena erupted... then these same wild creatures could and should be used the same way as canaries in a mine: because they would be able to give scientists pre-warning of an impending eruption that would be most likely much more accurate and much more reliable than any of the readings on their instruments...

 

I've heard that St Helens is acting up again. Wouldn't it be a good idea to monitor tha wild animals living there?

 

Does anyone have any first-hand information on this?

 

Dogs and other animals give warning of things like impending earthquakes that are about to happen : and they are 100% reliable. So why not wild deer or moose or wolves, or birds or... eh?

 

To put it more succinctly, my question is... was there an exodus of wild creatures leaving St Helen just before it erupted or not? Anybody know the answer?

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Hello Turak, welcome to Hypography.

 

A rather staggering amount of wildlife was killed in the eruption:

 

Wildlife in the Mount St. Helens area also suffered heavily. The Washington State Department of Game estimated that nearly 7,000 big game animals (deer, elk, and bear) perished in the area most affected by the eruption, as well as all birds and most small mammals. However, many small animals, chiefly burrowing rodents, frogs, salamanders, and crawfish, managed to survive because they were below ground level or water surface when the disaster struck. The Washington Department of Fisheries estimated that 12 million Chinook and Coho salmon fingerlings were killed when hatcheries were destroyed; these might have developed into about 360,000 adult salmon. Another estimated 40,000 young salmon were lost when they were forced to swim through the turbine blades of hydroelectric generators because the levels of the reservoirs along the Lewis River south of Mount St. Helens were kept low to accommodate possible mudflows and flooding.

 

CVO Website - Tilling, et.al., 1990, Eruptions of Mount St. Helens: Past, Present, and Future

 

Yet, there were only 57 human fatalities, and these were not people who were unaware of impending danger but rather people who faced that danger knowingly. The USGS was aware of an approaching eruption due to seismic activity, gas emissions, and other indicators which are explained in this wikipedia article on volcanic activity prediction:

In short: people are much better at predicting danger from volcanoes than animals because we have sensitive geological equipment that gives us a good idea of what magma is doing beneath the surface.

 

On the subject of animals sensing impending earthquakes, the USGS says:

Changes in animal behavior can not be used to predict earthquakes. Even though there have been documented cases of unusual animal behavior prior to earthquakes, a reproducible connection between a specific behavior and the occurrence of an earthquake has not been made. Animals change their behavior for many reasons and given that an earthquake can shake millions of people, it is likely that a few of their pets will, by chance, be acting strangely before an earthquake.

 

Can animals predict earthquakes?

~modest

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