What If You Mash-up Pets & Classified Ads?

Sorry I was smashed and had to share this with you guys. Yesterday I watched an amazing documentary on Discovery Channel about earthquakes. A guy could predict earthquakes 75% of the times, by mashing-up pets and classified ads…

An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth’s crust that creates seismic waves.

The seismicity or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time. Earthquakes are measured using observations from seismometers.

It looks like our climate is changing and that this change is triggering more earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis.

Okay, back to the topic: detecting earthquakes with pets in classified ads. Animals very often seem to sense an earthquake or tsunami much earlier than humans.

The Discovery documentary showed that elephants when crazy and broke their chains in Thailand, several hours before the tsunami hit the coast.

Cats and dogs when crazy hours before a serious earthquake started. They tried to tell their owners, but they did not understand the crazy behavior at all.

A smart guy in North America had discovered that animals could sense or predict i.e. earthquakes in a very early stage. So he mashed-up this fact and started to look at missing pets on classified sites, like Graig’s List etc.

He monitored several classified sites for months, looking for specific periods in which significantly more pets were missing compared to normal periods.

And he did find several periods in which many more animals were added missing. He created a logbook in order to map the periods of missing pets. With his logbook he detected that in 75% of these periods, an earthquake occured within several days.

So the animals were right. And mapping missing pets in a region on classified sites, showed 75% of the times: serious earthquake entering our area.

I was smashed. And still am. Such a simple but clever mash-up was leading towards predictions that not even the most advanced technologies could detect. Talking about creating very actionable insights…

Talking about having discovered the real pet detective at Discovery?