The Elephants felt the quake in their sensitive feet. Hell I get wary of shaking ground. Why wouldn’t an elephant.
It doesn’t take much understanding of animal behavior to understand the fear flight instinct .Its contagious.
The rest of your quote is really cute if you are an old lady peta member or a 4 year old.
now, now…
Maybe animals are just a hell of a lot faster at getting away, hmmmmmm? the few that ran cause “they’re feet told them to” made serious tracks.
Maybe some heard the call, but arguing that zoo animals got away is stupid…zoo animals can only run around in circles, bub!
If any animals ran they probably didnt make the 3 miles in the 15 minutes they had. The bottom line is all were fu**ed.
True, but there are tons of anecdote to show that animals act bizarrely when no quakes are imminent, too. And, had anyone been paying attention and keeping notes, I would be willing to bet heavily that there were also lots of animals reacting completely normally before the quakes.
But nobody was keeping notes, which is why we don’t have data, we have anecdotes. And there is a difference.
The Disney angle is very amusing, but there are real examples in the wild where the senses of one creature alert many others in the area.
How many times have you seen or heard of the phenomenon that normal birdcalls in a forest fall silent when one, or some collectively, sense a danger? I don’t think it’s very far-fetched to assume other creatures may notice the sudden cessation of birdcall and associate that with danger themselves. Animals held in captivity may not have the senses themselves to detect the danger and, isolated from those that do, they may be unaware of it. (Of course, that brings up the question of “captivity” and whether the animals could even have escaped had they known.)
Some animals that travel in packs or herds or gaggles or lawfirms or whatever post sentries who alert the others to an incoming predator.
I’m not convinced of an animal “sixth sense” or premonition. Not yet. But there may be, in the case of some kinds of natural disasters, something worth investigating.
Maybe, but the people who are competent to investigate these things are already investigating the possibility repeatable earthquake precursers. Diverting someone to study pre-quake animal behavior would be pretty low on my priority list.
So who is talking about zoo animals?
FYI Asian Elephants are native to S.E Asia, Sri Lanka and Sumatra.
(site)[http://search.netscape.com/ns/boomframe.http://search.netscape.com/ns/boomframe.jsp?query=asian+Elephant&page=1&offset=0&result_url=redir%3Fsrc%3Dwebsearch%26requestId%3Dff0353b9f85d014d%26clickedItemRank%3D4%26userQuery%3Dasian%2BElephant%26clickedItemURN%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.seaworld.org%2FAnimalBytes%2Fasian_elephantab.html%26invocationType%3D-%26fromPage%3DNSCPResults%26amp%3BampTest%3D1&remove_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.seaworld.org%2FAnimalBytes%2Fasian_elephantab.htmljsp?query=asian+Elephant&page=1&offset=0&result_url=redir%3Fsrc%3Dwebsearch%26requestId%3Dff0353b9f85d014d%26clickedItemRank%3D4%26userQuery%3Dasian%2BElephant%26clickedItemURN%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.seaworld.org%2FAnimalBytes%2Fasian_elephantab.html%26invocationType%3D-%26fromPage%3DNSCPResults%26amp%3BampTest%3D1&remove_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.seaworld.org%2FAnimalBytes%2Fasian_elephantab.html]
CNNs Wolf Blitzer just had a short blurp on his show about elephants. One animal handler couldn’t figure why his critters were so excited. 5 minutes before the tsunami the Elephants broke their chains and began running. 5 minutes later the elephant handler said he was running too.
I don’t follow. The burning building thing was supposed to be an example of how humans do things despite their being obviously dangerous. Getting between a lion and your offspring would seem to be an example of this too. The herd animal behavior presumably increases the parent’s inclusive fitness, but is there any reason to think that trying to save one’s offspring from a house fire does not (or that the equivalent would not have in pre-modern times)?
Are you saying that all people capable of studying reliable earthquake predictors is the same body of scientists who study animal behavior? Otherwise, I can’t imagine how studying one thing would take away from personnel studying the other.
I thought I was saying I would prefer the people who have the instruments and the expertise to study earthquakes looking for reliable warning signals not be diverted into a study of animals’ behavior re earthquakes.
Another anecdote on cats and earthquakes: a week ago, a small earthquake (4.3, but I felt it as a 2-something) hit a bit north of here. The only reason I noticed it was that I was in bed reading, with both cats sleeping at the foot of the bed on my feet. Their reaction to the quake? They lifted their heads, perked their ears and looked towards the window, and then went back to sleep. I think they were acting goofy earlier in the evening, but then, they chase each other around every night.
Dogs, cats and rodents aside; how about cows and horses? Their bodies can’t be missed, and I’m sure some must have lived within Tsunami-range. No reports of horses breaking free of their reins/fences and running uphill?
Sure, horses break free of their reins and fences and run uphill all the time. Easiest cite coming to my mind is the James Herriot veternarian books.
Oh, you mean right before the tsunami? Probably some breaking & running then, too. Maybe someone even noticed one incident. But what does that mean, since we know horses break & run at other times, too?
The only interesting question is “Did horses break & run more often right before the tsunami than at other times?”
And when you ask it that way, you see how hard it is to answer.
Is it a sixth sense or not.
Animals have heightened senses ,well maybe not teleutes cats.
An animal, instead of thinking “wow would you look at the bod on her” just go up and sniff her crotch. They don’t even get to go to jail if they are more persistant than is appreciated.
Critters are more in tune with nature and more so if they are wild critters.If you look at the human example a farmer will be more in tune than the newswriter simply because he spends more time outside dealing with the forces of nature.
Comparing dogs and cats ,who are domesticated so far beyond the wild they ought to have their own post ,is a different subject. Hell tabby doesn’t even have to get out of the rain because granny will grab her and run to the house so she doesn’t get wet.
So a sixth sense? Maybe just using the 5 they have to a greater extent than we domesticated humans understand.
Elephants can communicate with one another subsonically (at wavelengths too low for the human ear to detect) for distances of over 25 miles.
You would expect a tsunami to generate a lot of subsonic rumbling. So it would’t be surprising for elephants (and other animals able to detect subsonic noise) to react with alarm to the sound of the tsunami long before humans heard or saw the wave.
To animals, the sound produced by the onrushing tsunami might have been exceedingly loud and terrifying…while being completely inaudible to us humans.
Clarification:
“Subsonic sounds” seems an oxymoron, but the sounds are only “subsonic” to us humans.
That’s true…it would be interesting though to ask that question right after an earthquake, which typically has most people surviving, including people dealing with their cattle every day. But that question is probably adressed in that PDF-acticle jovan came up with earlier in this thread.
#1) I understand the term “sixth sense” is supposed to refer to senses beyond touch, hearing, vision, smell, and taste. Perhaps those five terms are used because we have discovered detector neurons and specific organs associated with them, but then shouldn’t touch be divided into many different senses? And what about the sense of time? Just because we haven’t found a place in the brain where our sense of time is located, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. And the sense of direction…where’s that?
but more important, #2) why was this thread moved? Seems to me if The Great Master hasn’t yet addressed it, and it’s not in his first four books, that this is exactly the type of question that would be addressed by him. Not saying that the conversation isn’t enlightening, because it is, but this is a GENERAL QUESTION, isn’t it? Ok, I’m better now. Thanks, boys and girls. xo C.
The other Forum is named (and intended for) Comments on Cecil’s Columns. Its purpose is for the Teeming Millions to applaud the Master (or to have the temerity to challenge him) on columns he has already written for The Chicago Reader.
To address a question to Cecil, simply e-mail him at cecil@chicagoreader.com . (Of course, since Cecil answers such question via his weekly column, it is a hit or miss proposition as to whether he will directly respond within the decade.) Many questions that Cecil finds amusing but does not choose to answer are handed off to the Straight Dope Staff for answers in the supplemental column on the Straight Dope main page.
If your question stumps the Teeming Millions who attempt to answer it in the General Questions Forum, then, if Cecil deems it noteworthy, he may, indeed, answer it, himself. We on the Staff, however, do not presume to tell him which questions he needs to address. Therefore, this question, which was not a comment on any previous question, was moved to this Forum to seek an answer.
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