Well before this city was destroyed by an earthquake 32 years ago, the coming disaster was loudly preceded by strange animal behaviour and other bizarre signals that survivors wish they heeded. "The animals were trying to tell us something. If only we knew that, not so many people would have died," said Fu Wenran, a retired farmer, whose wife was among the estimated 240,000 who perished in Tangshan's quake on July 28, 1976 in China. Several survivors of the disaster in this northern city said the toll in this month's quake in south-western China could have been minimised if such clues had been validated. Chinese media reports and Internet blogs have buzzed with the reports of mass migrations of thousands of frogs and toads near the quake region in Sichuan province just before the May 12 disaster, which left more than 80,000 people dead or missing. There is little dispute among scientists that animals can predict earthquakes, possibly through sensitivity to pressure waves. "Physical and chemical stimuli emanate from the earth prior to an earthquake and animals can probably sense that," said George Pararas-Carayannis, a chemist and oceanographer. "Scientists can detect heightened earthquake risks by monitoring build-ups of seismological pressure, ground tilting and magnetic field changes, although no quake has ever been accurately predicted this way,' he said. Fu, then a farmer on the city's outskirts, said dogs erupted in wild howling and before the quake struck at 3:42 am. Mice and snakes skittered around crazily in the open. Horses and cows kicked at their stable walls.