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12/27/2014

Topic Reading-Vol.990-12/27/2014

Dear MEL School’s Topic Readers,
Birds 'heard tornadoes coming' and fled the day before
How could birds sense extreme weather conditions? It has been said in Japan that catfish can sense an earthquake coming. Sometimes birds fly away to somewhere when nothing seems unusual to human’s eyes. Then, how come these little golden-winged warblers that weigh only less than nine grams flew hundreds of kilometers just in time to avoid the tornadoes that devastated their nesting area?
The researchers think that the deep rumble that tornadoes produce, infrasound whose frequency is well below what humans can hear, might have been sensed by the birds to take an such evasive action. If that is the case, humans may be able to develop something that hears or detects such infrasound, just like infrared, to warn occurrence of extreme weather conditions like tornados or thunderstorms or even an earthquake in the future.
Enjoy reading and learning about the latest finding of Mother Nature.

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