Snake sensitivity to electric potentials

[FrankM]

Have snakes ever been tested for their sensitivity to electric potentials?

 

I monitor and sometimes participate in a forum that is investigating earthquake precursors. One of the developments in seismology research is that an active seismic fault creates electric currents that radiate from or near the epicenters outward, and to the surface. These currents are being detected and measured by satellite and land based instruments.

 

A member posted a URL about how snakes are being used to detect earthquakes.

 

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Snakes in China 'predict quakes'

 

The Chinese are just looking at snake activity (not causative factors), however, it is known that other animals react to in-ground potentials, and their potential sensitivities have been measured.

 

http://www.cowtime.com.au/technical/QuickNotes/Quick_Note_6_1.pdf

 

In general, the earth is a poor conductor, but a small current across a high resistance results in a "high potential". Just how sensitive are the earth huggers to potentials across their bottom extremities?

[FrankM]

The obvious environmental suspects that effect snakes are heat, cold, dryness and wetness. It was mentioned in a another forum that atmospheric pressure and atmospheric ionization may be additional environmental factors.

 

After reviewing additional material and having personal talks with people about "pet" responses to earthquakes I have to add another environmental characteristic to the mix of conditions, polarity sensitivity. Some may want to use the term ionization levels, which is essentially correct, but they can be positive or negative.

 

Animals that have no direct earth contact, within wood dwellings and seemingly "insulated" areas, have reacted well before any seismic activity was felt by humans.

 

One of the things that has been known for sometime is that the polarity of the ionosphere/atmosphere above an area that is about to have an earthquake, and during, changes polarity from its normal positive value to negative. This polarity reversal interrupted radio communications, no skip. The earthquake precursor currents are produced by positive charge carriers, thus creating a region of positive earth and an opposing negative area in the atmosphere above this region. At the surface, the potential levels generated by major earthquakes can be at such a level that there are visible effects of atmospheric ionization, earthquake lights.

 

The normal ambient polarity of the atmosphere is positive relative to the earth. It is known that atmospheric activity, thunderstorms, can result in localized polarity reversal when a negatively charged cloud is overhead. Some clouds are positive and some are negative.

 

It may be that snakes and other creatures are sensitive to changes in the earth to atmosphere polarity. There are relatively simple instruments to indicate "relative" changes in atmospheric polarity.

 

Observing the changes in the charge in the atmosphere close to the surface of the Earth

 

A "field mill" can measure the actual potential values, but they are not cheap.

 

Until various "environmental" factors are individually isolated and snake response noted, all one can do is speculate what factor is causing what response.

[Ganoderma]

temperature and humidty are pretty important to snakes. i never noticed any behaviour differences when say a storm came and changed pressure with mine (not that i was looking).

 

amphibians however are very sensitive and air pressure is a big tool in getting many species to breed. have you guys looked into frogs and such for your studies? perhaps they would help aid in monitoring such changes, they are certainly sensitive to many things.

 

i am a little curious what sort of changes you are hoping to find in the snakes behaviour. i had many when living on coastal BC canada but never noticed any disturbances when we hd earthquakes (although we dont have too many and are fairly small). i may just be running my mouth but i dont see snakes changing much on the outside, perhaps monitoring their brain activity?

 

interesting topic!

[FrankM]

Ganoderma It seems snakes have attracted Chinese attention, which was noted in the first URL I posted, "Snakes in China Predict Quakes". Other animals and even birds react to earthquake precursors, but snakes make an ideal study item because they can be observed in a confined area, and they don't eat much.

 

The Chinese have observed them thrashing violently well before an earthquake is felt by humans or measured by conventional seismic instruments.

 

As I stated earlier, earthquake precursors (and earthquakes) are producing in-earth currents which produce very low frequency electromagnetic (EM) emissions that are being detected by satellite and earthbound instruments. The Chinese are just observing the snakes and don't seem to be trying to find out what actually is causing the snakes to react. These in-earth currents spread out from the area of seismic stress, and in so doing, they are creating potential differences across the relatively high resistance of the earths surface.

 

A snake is in contact with and spread out over the earth's surface, and I want to know if snakes are sensitive to electric potentials, and at what level do they start to react?

[FrankM]

Ganoderma I didn't pay attention to your location. The instrumentation available on Taiwan before the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake has provided a wealth of information about the precursor characteristics before a major earthquake.

 

http://tao.cgu.org.tw/pdf/v153p545.pdf

 

Another report mentioned the in-ground currents produced at the time of the actual Chi-Chi earthquake, and they estimated they were from 500,000 to 1,000,000 amperes. The actual current in a given small cross-section of surface area will be quite small, but the instruments were measuring the vector sum of the whole current producing area, which extended for many kilometers.

 

I am somewhat surprised that the experts at the earthquake bureau in Nanning, in southern Guangxi province, do not have two groups of snakes to monitor, one group with earth contact and another group in above ground containment insulated from the earth.

 

It just seems logical to me that one might want to know if earth contact is needed or not. The Nanning experts may be just bureaucrats.

[InfiniteNow]

Interesting article you've linked, Frank. Have you had the opportunity to look through those listed in the references section? While I have not explored them myself, it appears that there may be some data bits of interest to you there...

 

Good luck in the search. :shrug:

[FrankM]

InfiniteNow I am not an earthquake researcher specifically, but that is the process that induces the mechanism of the precursor and earthquake currents. My main interest is in the in-earth conduction process for these currents. The research by Freund has identified a mechanism in rocks under stress that creates electric currents that had not been identified before. How these currents are being propagated within the earth is contrary to everything we have been traditionally taught about earth resistivity/conductivity. The free electron model no longer applies.

 

I believe the snake response issue is related to the in-earth currents and conduction mechanism, and getting people interested in this area will help in the overall research. An individual stated that one cannot determine a snakes inability to sense something, but until we try to isolate various environmental factors, and use what instrumentation we currently have, we are just speculating as to their full range of sensitivities.

 

For snakes, the internal impedance/resistivity would be close to that of other animals, the main conductive medium being the water content of the tissue. However, before the electrical current gets to the interior it has to pass through the resistance of the snakes skin.

 

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/t...snakeskin.html

 

Contrary to popular belief snake skin is dry, not slimy (with the exception of newly born or hatched snakes). Snake skin consists entirely of overlapping scales, specialized folds of skin, that provide protection from the environment and from predators. The scales are composed primarily of keratin, but also contain waxes that help to prevent water loss through the skin.

The ventral scales on the snakes belly will not be as conductive as the internal tissue, thus its electrical resistivity will much higher. I would expect a snake to have a much higher "effective" resistance than animals in general because of their scales.

 

Ideally, one should be able to test snakes to find out exactly when they feel an electric current that causes them to react. I have been unable to find any research reports in this area. Before doing electrical stimulus tests on snakes you need to know their impedance/resistivity. We react differently to dc and ac potentials, and so should animals and snakes, thus they should be tested with both ac and dc potentials.

 

There are many people that keep snakes, but few of them would know how to do even primitive electrical sensitivity tests. The individuals that do bioelectrical research would have the knowledge how to do the tests, but how does one find somebody wiling to do this? If you don't do it correctly one can fry a snake, then you have lost your test specimen.

 

Do dry area snakes have different resistivities than wet area snakes?

[InfiniteNow]

Why not just build a more sensitive detetor instead of figuring out a way to test the conductance of snakes?

 

It sounds a bit like trying to wire up a whale to emit sound at different octaves when you could just build a better speaker system...

 

Also, how exactly did the free electron model apply to subcrustal earth to begin with? That model tends to be limited to crystalline structures or metallic solids, where an electron is not tied to an atomic nucleus and moves per the local electric field. I am relatively confident that earth does not fall into either the crystalline nor solid metal category. Can you clarify how that model applied to begin with so I can begin to approach your declaration that it applies no longer?

 

 

Cheers. :rolleyes:

[HydrogenBond]

An old friend of mine used to collect snakes. I remember the first time going over his house to see his collection. After the basic tour, I felt an 8ft boa slither from under the sofa around my leg. It was a little unsettling, until he told me she was friendly and liked to be picked up.

 

From what I learned, snakes are essentially, blind, but respond to smell with their tongue. They also use a hunger cycle for hunting, with smell having little affect on making them want to eat, if they already have a stomach of food. When they got hungry (2-4 weeks) I was told to wash my hands since patting other critters could cause them to think my hand was a meal, i.e., being blind and all and using smell (nothing personal). I never noticed his snakes affected by the electric fields coming from his TV, sound system or fluorescent light fixtures in their tanks.

 

However, he did have a Burmese python that was the meanest thing on no legs. It got mean because he had to force feed it when it got sick to keep it alive and protect his expensive investment. When the snake got well, if it saw any human figure go near its tank, it would attack the glass. That snake made it unclear whether it could see something or whether it was picking up nervous system based EM fields.

[FrankM]

Why not just build a more sensitive detetor instead of figuring out a way to test the conductance of snakes?

What kind of detector and what range?

 

If we can determine what causes a snake to react in the manner described by the Chinese observers, we can then try a number of instrument types that would be suitable to detect the in-ground currents. At the moment we do not know whether it takes 1 volt or 50 volts to get a snake to react. The voltage level could be different between ac and dc. For dc we generally don't react until about 50 volts, but a snakes skin should have a higher resistance than our skin.

 

Another obvious problem is that we don't know when an earthquake precursor current will occur and the detection instruments will have to be installed in an area of seismic activity.

 

The Chinese report didn't indicate the nature of the ground in which their snakes had contact. What kind of ground characteristics are most likely to result in a snake feeling an in-ground current? Does it matter whether a snake is coiled up or stretched out?

 

Also, how exactly did the free electron model apply to subcrustal earth to begin with?

I have no idea when this was first applied, but it probably resulted from the theories of what caused electrical conductance. Back in the mid-1800s they found that telegraph lines could be made with one wire with the earth as the other "conductor". There are "one-wire" high voltage transmission lines in Australia, where the second line is the earth. However, the earthquake and precursor currents are propagated by positive charge carriers as opposed to electrons which are negative charge carriers.

 

There has been a lot more research since the following report was issued.

 

http://www.scientificexploration.org/jse/articles/pdf/17.1_freund.pdf

 

About halfway down the report it gets into the mechanism which releases the positive charge carriers, which are referred to as pholes. You can find more reports by Freund on the internet. Other researchers are examining the same phenomena.

[InfiniteNow]

Another cool link, Frank. Thanks. That paper offers you well more information on the subject than I ever could. I'm curious though... has anyone thought about studying voltage differences between the earth and the atmosphere to study pending quakes? From what I can tell, the studies have been limited to EM transmission through the Earth. Maybe (and that's a BIG maybe) the phenomenon has something to due with different voltages between the ground and the atmosphere... :eek_big:

 

The answer to that question aside, thanks for sharing your interest with the rest of us. :)

[FrankM]

One of the issues not being recognized by the Chinese is the characteristics of a snakes underground den when subjected to in-ground currents and how this results in a rapid change of the voltage polarity between the earth and the atmosphere. This condition is recognized by those that climb mountains, work in mines, or visit caves. You can look at sites that discuss mine and cave safety to find statements how they can be dangerous when there are nearby or overhead thunderstorms. Excess charge concentrations and rapid polarity reversals are well known phenomena related to nearby and overhead thunderstorms, and the currents produced by seismic precursors and seismic events are known to create charge reversal and radical changes in the charge levels in the atmosphere.

 

An underground snake den is just a small cave and is subject to the same "physics" as being experienced in those large enough for humans to enter.

 

http://www.nols.edu/resources/research/pdfs/lightningsafetycavers.pdf

 

I made an extended survey through academic channels concerning one question, "Have there been any studies to determine the magnitudes of the potentials that exist between the walls and ceilings of caves and mines when there are nearby and overhead thunderstorms?"

 

One of the responses I received was from the head of the "Earth Sciences" department of a nationally known university with "mines" in its title , and he stated, "No" to the question. I periodically communicate with him on this particular subject.

 

The Chinese have implanted video cameras somewhere in the snake dens to observe their responses. Any wires coming from the surface will disrupt the "natural" electric fields generated by in-ground or above ground charges, thus changing the charge distributions within the "cave". Their observation method may void the conditions which are causing snakes to react.

 

Snake sensitivity to "earthquakes" is just one of the indicators that we can use to identify when such events are developing. I can find nothing in the literature that identifies the "bio-electric" characteristics of snakes. One "biologist" that responded to this issue could see no value in determining a snakes electrical resistance or how they react to various electric potentials. It is amazing how individuals in the "sciences" put on blinders when observations are made by individuals outside of their area of expertise.

 

I'm curious though... has anyone thought about studying voltage differences between the earth and the atmosphere to study pending quakes?

Yes, but how best to do this is a major question. The Japanese are measuring the change in the ion levels above seismic zones. Others are keeping track of how the seismic induced currents disrupt "radio propagation", because there is a polarity reversal in the atmosphere that prevents normal "skip". I have suggested the use of "field mills" but they are not cheap and they would have to be installed in many locations over and near active seismic zones. Remember, a nearby or overhead thunderstorm will detect changes in the earth's atmospheric charge levels. If you do not have a thunderstorm you might be assured that a charge level change is due to seismic generated currents, but until baseline conditions are established in a seismic area they will not know what to expect.

[Turtle]

There are many people that keep snakes, but few of them would know how to do even primitive electrical sensitivity tests. The individuals that do bioelectrical research would have the knowledge how to do the tests, but how does one find somebody wiling to do this? If you don't do it correctly one can fry a snake, then you have lost your test specimen.

 

Our new member mark5019 keeps and rescues snakes; perhaps we can interest him in conducting some experiments? :cheer:

[mark5019]

An old friend of mine used to collect snakes. I remember the first time going over his house to see his collection. After the basic tour, I felt an 8ft boa slither from under the sofa around my leg. It was a little unsettling, until he told me she was friendly and liked to be picked up.

 

From what I learned, snakes are essentially, blind, but respond to smell with their tongue. They also use a hunger cycle for hunting, with smell having little affect on making them want to eat, if they already have a stomach of food. When they got hungry (2-4 weeks) I was told to wash my hands since patting other critters could cause them to think my hand was a meal, i.e., being blind and all and using smell (nothing personal). I never noticed his snakes affected by the electric fields coming from his TV, sound system or fluorescent light fixtures in their tanks.

 

However, he did have a Burmese python that was the meanest thing on no legs. It got mean because he had to force feed it when it got sick to keep it alive and protect his expensive investment. When the snake got well, if it saw any human figure go near its tank, it would attack the glass. That snake made it unclear whether it could see something or whether it was picking up nervous system based EM fields.

 

 

just to give my 2 cents, o keep and rescue snakes, they have good motion sight.

and once a snakes fed they stay in a hunger mode for a while.

[FrankM]

I was reminded that the in-ground current produced by seismic activity has an analog in lightning strikes. When lightning strikes the ground the current disperses from the strike point throughout the ground, its current diminishing as it spreads.

 

I noted this reference before but one needs to reexamine its meaning when we see what humans should do if they are caught outside during lightning events.

 

An underground snake den is just a small cave and is subject to the same "physics" as being experienced in those large enough for humans to enter.

 

http://www.nols.edu/resources/research/pdfs/lightningsafetycavers.pdf

 

I do not know what snakes do when they are exposed to conditions wherein there could be nearby lightning strikes, but humans caught outside in such a condition are supposed to minimize their contact with the ground to reduce exposure.

 

TORRO: Research: Lightning

 

"If caught out in the open with no shelter nearby, move to a place of lower elevation such as a hollow or dry ditch. Crouch down (to lower your height) with both feet close together. Do not place your feet wide apart or lie flat on the ground as this will increase the difference in voltage across your body, increasing the electrical charge you may receive from radial ground currents, if lightning strikes the ground nearby. Tuck your head in and place your hands on your knees."

 

The "radial ground currents" can cause significant damage to biological systems.

 

Snakes don't have the luxury of minimizing their contact with the ground.

 

Has anybody been in the field and had the opportunity to observe snake reactions to nearby lightning strikes?

[Turtle]

I...The "radial ground currents" can cause significant damage to biological systems.

 

Snakes don't have the luxury of minimizing their contact with the ground.

 

 

Actually, I know of two ways snakes minimize their contact with the ground. The first, and rightly so, is radial; that is coiling round with the forward part of the body atop the lower coils. I estimate at least 2/3 of the body length contact is eliminated for a coiled snake.

 

The second, is by 'sidewinding', one of the forms of locomotion that snakes use. Often seen in desert snakes, the minimized body contact keeps the snake cool. I estimate no more than 1/6 of the snake's total length is in ground contact at any one time while sidewinding. I don't know if they can hold such a position while still or not.

 

Now while snakes' do exhibit earthquake awareness, it may have an acoustic component as well as electric. Elephants for example assume a posture wherin the trunk is pressed onto the ground to sense sub-sonic signals. Perhaps snakes assume a particular posture to sense low frequency acoustic signals? Perhaps earthquake electric effects produce low frequency acoustic signals? :D Other reptiles? :D :evil:

[FrankM]

Now while snakes' do exhibit earthquake awareness, it may have an acoustic component as well as electric.

The existence of acoustic phenomena related to seismic action is undisputed. This was established conclusively in a study some 2 decades ago.

 

Earthquake Waves Outrace Sound, Alaska Science Forum

 

However, the report which cited the above provided the following:

Similar explosive sounds have been documented in modern quakes but not necessarily BEFORE the ground begins to move. Indeed, it is not uncommon for earthquakes to be heard but not felt. Of particular interest is the swarm of small earthquakes that unnerved the city of Spokane, WA in 2001. Many of the Spokane quakes were definitely accompanied by "booming sounds".

Earthquake FAQ

 

If you want to hear some earthquake sounds go here:

CISN: Sounds of the Parkfield earthquake

 

The acoustic response is recorded near coincident with the seismic motion, but the precursor electric currents occur before there is an actual physical movement of the fault. While traditional seismologists (acoustic-seismologists) are constantly listening for acoustic output some radicals (electro-seismologists) have just begun to "listen" for the precursor electric currents. The French Demeter satellite has been monitoring the EM emissions created by the precursor currents for several years and Stanford University has a small satellite for the same purpose.

 

QuakeSat Nano-Satellite Stanford University Space Systems Development Laboratory

 

If snakes are "hearing" or "feeling" something well before seismic action creates movement the acoustic-seismologists haven't detected whatever it is, but the electro-seismologists are detecting electric currents.

 

Just for starters, what is the impedance of a snake?