Earthquakes are one of the last completely unpredictable scourges for mankind. With technical means it is possible to predict an earthquake just 40 seconds in advance. However, it is often observed that animals behave nervously before an earthquake and especially small animals can react up to 72 hours before the disaster. “Earlybird” is an earth-quake warning system that seeks to measure this behaviour and for the first time ever produces statistically viable data. It measures the amount of jumps a canary bird does in its cage. Every time the bird jumps from one perch to the other, this is counted by a small processing unit and the data are sent to a server. Here, they are statistically analysed and compared with the data from all other cages in the geographical region and throughout the world. One bird jumping more than usual won’t set off an alarm, but when many birds in the same region start to behave odd it might be a sign that an earthquake is imminent.
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