Thousands of toads an omen?

2008-05-15 13:37

Beijing - Days before China's massive earthquake, hundreds of thousands of toads swarmed through a town near the epicentre, leading to a storm of speculation on whether there was a connection.

Internet blogs have been buzzing with news of the potential omen, with one website showing footage of a street in Mianyang covered by a countless number of the small brown amphibians.

But an expert quoted on Thursday by China's official Xinhua news agency put a damper on the theory.

Zhang Guomin of the China Seismological Bureau said there were "complicated reasons" why animals could behave abnormally.

"An earthquake is only one of them, along with climate change and weather conditions," he was quoted as saying.

A local newspaper journalist in Mianyang had since Sunday been asking residents about the mass migrations of toads, many of which were squashed under cars or pedestrians.

Some people replied that the toads were an omen of a disaster, while others joked that they might have come to welcome the Beijing Olympic flame.

Another explanation, offered by a local forestry official, was that it was mating season.

The deputy director of China's earthquake predicting body, Zhang Xiaodong, said his line of work would see a major breakthrough if there were some link between a natural phenomenon and an imminent earthquake.

But he noted that an odd phenomenon before one earthquake may not happen again before another disaster elsewhere.

"Earthquake forecasting remains a puzzle for the world," he said.

- AFP