Question: Are volcanos living?

Matthew Pankhurst answered on 17 Jun 2013:

Because it’s made of rocks, and rocks don’t reproduce, a volcano isn’t living by most peoples definition. However, that depends on how you define ‘living’, which is tricky and is still a good question that people argue about. We often talk about volcanoes having a ‘lifetime’ from when they are born (first stuff comes out of the ground) to when they go extinct (harder to work out, but after the last eruption). When you’re on a volcano that is active, it sometimes feels like what’s under you is alive. This is because the ground is warm, usually hot gasses and steam is noisily hissing from somewhere nearby and lava sloshing around makes a “whump whump” sort of noise. They can often smell like rotten eggs too!