It’s not the city, but Yala National Park, a wildlife reserve.
Whenever a big earthquake hits Japan (fairly often) there’s always tons of stories about animals going apeshit some hours before. I know some scientists over here are studying this behaviour and some think it might have to do with magnetic disturbances.
In one tv show (yeah, I know), they showed an experiment where various insects were subjected to ultra-low frequency magnetic field variations, of the same frequency that often occurs before large earthquakes. They started exhibiting the same sort of behaviour - rolling on their backs, trying to climb out of the vivarium - that pet owners reported.
I found a lengthy article (pdf!!!) covering the topic of earthquake prediction and animal perception. There’s no doubt that in some cases magnetic disturbances occur before earthquakes, though we don’t know how. There’s also no question that some animals can perceive those changes. In that sense, the talk of “sixth sense” isn’t too far-fetched. Whether that has anything to do with giant waves, I don’t know, but there is at least some research on this topic.
I know there’s a phenomenon regarding animals and this “extra sensory perception” that they have, but the actual name escapes me (it’s like animal premonitions, basically). Anyways, my history teacher told me about this and he said that in Rome (or some town near Rome), some time ago, a man was sitting outside his home when he noticed all the dogs, cats, rats, rabbits, and other animals in the town were all moving in one direction and leaving the town. A few days later, an earthquake hit the town. I have no doubt that the animals sensed vibrations underneath the earth and fled. The animals living in the areas that were hit by the tsunami probably did the same thing.
I’m sorry for the vagueness of my post. I just thought I’d add my one cent, but hopefully, there’s someone who knows the name of this premonitory animal behaviour who will enlighten us.
as i recall… the building administrators DID tell the occupants to stay put at first… IIRC it was to prevent a panic… it was assumed, initially, that the building could withstand the impact just fine. Which it could actually… it was the resulting fires that destroyed the buildings (because of sub-standard construction and design, typical of modern contracting, but i digress).
Jester, the WTC design and construction was NOT “substandard”. It was designed to withstand the impact of a 707 (the largest airliner in existance at the time of its construction) and had what was, at the time, believed to be adequate fireproofing.
It is hardly the fault of the WTC designers if a group of people delibrately crashed two airplanes even larger than the 707 into the structure. At that, it DID withstand the impact - one larger than the design specifications considered. It held together long enough for thousands of people to escape.
Truth is, I’m not sure that we could design a building to completely withstand such an impact followed by such a fire even with 30 more years of advancing technology to work with.
Yes, we can, and the danger of heat was also known before the event took place. But that’s another story.
As far as the animals, I agree with the post two up, but I would like to add one important thing. Even if humans cannot perceive certain things, we can perceive animals perceiving these things. But our strength is sometimes also our weakness - we are able to learn to marginalise our instincts.
The whole nature versus nurture thing is one of the most interesting and compelling aspects of human beings, and it plays a central role in many, many social issues and often plays a central role in art.
(as an aside, the dogs of Phucket, where were they supposed to go?)
I saw an interview with Jack Hanna ,who I think is the curator at the San Diego Zoo,
where he explained that possibly the elephants sensed the quake through their sensitive
feet and were wary. This wariness was probably sensed by other animals and when the
Tsunami began the local sea bird population got excited ?telegraphing? the all is not well
message to all that were paying attention.
Seems like a pretty good explanation to me.
I have cats. I’ve had many cats in my time. The cats are excellent at spotting evil, invisible creatures outside the windows and hissing at them. They also attack evil invisible creatures on the floor. And they eat carpet lint and twist-ties (no matter how hard we try to keep them from getting a hold of 'em.) They have shown no signs thus far of any mystical or seemingly-mystical abilities to predict the future. On the plus side, they eat the carpet lint that we’d have to vacuum up otherwise.
It’s silly to argue about this without having any evidence that it occurs in the first place. “No reports of dead animals” implies that the rescuers are gonna be radioing back to base to report every rabbit or deer they find dead. And no doubt not every rescue worker has been interviewed, and a lot of 'em probably don’t particularly remember the particulars of dead animals, if they’re looking for living people.
It’s very nice to say that animals have a mysterious sixth sense or some particularly acute ability to detect ground vibrations or wind direction or great disturbances in the Force. But just because it’s “common knowledge” doesn’t mean it’s true - after all, common knowledge during the Middle Ages held that dogs and cats spread the plague.
I can’t believe none of the people here claiming that their animals have predicted disasters are capable of understanding the concept of confirmation bias. You remember the events that were preceded by Fluffy acting out-of-sorts and don’t remember the ones that Fluffy had to be carried out of because she was sleeping at the time. You’re not any more immune to this phenomenon than anyone else. It’s unbelievable to me how many people are so mentally lazy that they figure they have some miraculous ability to be free of all the misperceptions and slipshod observations that they know everyone else is subject to.
Find some actual, hard evidence, and explain away the other sources that discuss the mounds of dead animals. Or else just go away, and try to remember that people are animals too, and despite the concept’s popularity, it’s not necessarily true that we’ve lost seemingly-magical abilities that every other critter around still has.
Most dogs that I’ve had will run and hide under a bed or something when it thunders. Typically they will start acting this way sometime before I can hear thunder, but that’s because they have better hearing than me and have heard thunder even farther off.
I don’t think it’s “crazy” or “mystical” to believe that some animals with certain heightened sense can’t hear sounds or other things that may be associated with earthquakes.
Well, that would explain why a dog would hide under the bed when he hears the sound of a distant tsunami, but I don’t see dogs runnung to higher ground when they hear thunder.
I for one have seen dead animals in the ruins on television. Next time you’re watching feed of clean up efforts, tear your eyes off the dead baby and look around. You’ll see them.
Not really. Herd animals do that because that strategy has a better chance of survival for all. Running away from predators as a large herd animal will generally get the young separated and eaten. A closer analogy would be if a herd animal ran into a feeding frenzy to save their young…and that does not happen, AFAIK.
Widen the loop just a bit. Under the bed = place of safety. Animals are quite leery of unusual occurances, noises, sights etc. and tend to run away from them toward what looks like a safer place, the "under the bed’ being merely illustrative. And, for zoo animals near the coast, a noise coming from the coast would cause them to run away from it. When you are near the coast, away from it is toward higher ground.
In any case, it seems we agree that there will turn out to be plenty of dead animals, as a couple of posts have already stated. TV news broadcasts concentrate on what happened to the people and seldom, if ever, pause to show a picture of a dead rat.
Good Lord. My roommate (40 years old) just came home from work and proudly announced that “no animals died as a result of the tsunamis, they all ran uphill.” Is someone actually reporting this on the news?
I don’t know if he’s trying to bait me, or he really believes everything he hears.
The elephants were wary? Of what? From where? Never mind, they were being wary and they told the rhinos who told the zebras who told the cats who told the family of mice who live under the barn.
The ‘sixth sense’ explanation is nonsense. There are few reports of dead animals because no-one is looking for dead animals. The animals that survived managed to do so in exactly the same way as the humans. The only advantage animals have is they aren’t as complacent as humans when it comes to danger. When something’s big, loud and scary they don’t wait around thinking nothing bad is going to happen.
