Gee, wonder if the pets can tell of impending underground nuclear tests. The largest recent earthquakes in North Korea have been nuclear tests.

Imagine if the Japan trench area was dry and people lived there. There was a M7.2 and a lot of aftershocks. Animals and people would act strangely and then one coule say that the strange animal behavior was predicting the coming M9.

That is an extreme example to make the point: a bunch of 2s and 3s may show that something is going on, but, say, in California this occurs all the time without anything much bigger to follow.

I recall hearing that there was a lot of seismicity before the L-Aquila quake. Same for 1975 in China. Why not 373 BC Helice? The elephants, if true, were not predicting an earthquake: it had already happened. If true, they may have been hearing or sensing vibrations from the tsunami as it hit down the coast.

But, before explanations, you have to watch the "if true". After the quake reports have to be viewed with some suspicion. These days, for many areas modern instruments can detect foreshocks (but not know they are foreshocks), radon (if that ever is a precursor), even the large EM signal that occured before the 1989 Loma Prieta quake.

A place like Haiti that had zero seismometers before the quake (OK, had 1, but was not working well), animals and people might feel forshocks, but in most if not all areas, thhe majority of large quakes do not have foreshocks, and we don't know how to tell if seismicity will lead to a major or larger quake.

Tremor is being recorded before certain quakes, and it is recorded in places like Cascadia and is not followed by large quakes, but at some places (Parkfield, NW Turkey) is not recognized until long after the quake.

Research scientists are working on this. It has not had significant success yet. Your (EQF) links combine too much junk, especially the one on the magnetic pole shift; that was way over the top. I've posted here on a mass fish kill that occurred in December 2010 in my skating pond: the pond had dried out and was covered with ice, so what little remaining water was left would not have much oxygen. Sure, it might be plausible that a magnetic pole shift would cause some species (like bees?) to have some trouble navigating, but this shift for now is continuous and slow....maybe in mid latitudes taking a couple of years to change in direction a degree. (I could check that).

garbage in, garbage out.

Chris