# Animal ESP?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/animal-esp/807854>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [January 31, 2018, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/animal-esp/807854 "2018-01-31T02:40:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\
**Post date:** [January 31, 2018, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/animal-esp/807854/21 "2018-01-31T19:53:20Z")

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> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> On a similar note, I recently saw about 50 people walk into a large metal container…and it just floated into the sky and disappeared!  
> Levitation?

Why assume levitation, when time travel is just as likely an explanation?:dubious:

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**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\
**Post date:** [January 31, 2018, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/animal-esp/807854/22 "2018-01-31T21:37:00Z")

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I don’t believe animals have any sixth sense or ESP but this does remind me of a strange incident that occurred about 15 years ago. To set the scene I grew up in a glen in a rural area, a farming area so a lot of sheep dogs around.

I was still awake in the early hours of the morning when I heard something that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, dogs howling and yelling but not in a healthy sense, it was if they were in great fear and distress about something.

I went outside and met my uncle who had also heard it, we stood near the kennel of his dog Ben who was joining in, as well as our sheepdog, Nell, they were ignoring us and howling as if their life depended on it, as it seemed were every other dog all around the glen, the cacophony kept building and building and then just…ended…and not a slow wind-down but as if someone had flipped a switch and every dog stopped howling simultaneously, as the saying goes the silence was deafening. Ben just looked at us with a _“What?”_ expression and went back into his kennel as had Nell. Whatever they knew they weren’t telling.

As far as I’m aware there were no alien landings or dark and terrible rites to raise Lovecraftian entities taking place that evening but it was certainly one of the strangest things I’ve ever experienced.

On a less creepy but still odd note Ben’s kennel was set in off the side of the main road which he had no view of. When strangers walked by he would bark out his disapproval but when someone he knew did the same he wouldn’t respond, I can only think he could tell their footsteps apart, possibly sense of smell as well?

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