WASHINGTON — Area residents didn't feel Tuesday's earthquake coming, but some denizens of the capital's National Zoo did.

Red-ruffed lemurs sounded an alarm, apes left their food, flamingos rushed into a huddle, and a gorilla shrieked — all before the magnitude-5.8 quake struck, rattling nerves across the East Coast.

Zoo officials compiled a list of "changes in animal behavior" that depicted a noisy, frantic scene in parts of the 163-acre park.

Just before the ground started to shake, Iris, an orangutan, "began 'belch vocalizing' — an unhappy/upset noise normally reserved for extreme irritation." Mandara, a gorilla, "let out a shriek and collected her baby," then fled to higher ground. A flock of 64 flamingos "rushed about and grouped themselves together."

And the lemurs began an alarm cry a full 15 minutes before the quake arrived.

Alex Demas, a spokesman for the U.S. Geological Survey, said animals often can detect "P waves," small seismic ripples that occur before humans feel an earthquake.

"That's, most of the time, what's happening when animals react before us," Demas said. "We have no evidence that animals can predict earthquakes."

After the quake began, snakes were "writhing," ducks interrupted their feeding to jump into a pool, and beavers "stood on their hind legs and looked around, then got into the water too."

Although the quake may have caused a commotion, it didn't cause any structural damage to the zoo, which, like most of the District of Columbia, returned to business as usual Wednesday.