Do Animals Have a Sixth Sense?
Wildlife officials in Sri Lanka expressed surprise Wednesday that they found no evidence of large-scale animal deaths from the weekend's massive tsunami — indicating that animals may have sensed the wave coming and fled to higher ground.
An Associated Press photographer who flew over Sri Lanka's Yala National Park in an air force helicopter saw abundant wildlife, including elephants, buffalo, deer, and not a single animal corpse.
Floodwaters from the tsunami swept into the park, uprooting trees and toppling cars onto their roofs — one red car even ended up on top of a huge tree — but the animals apparently were not harmed and may have sought out high ground, said Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne, whose Jetwing Eco Holidays ran a hotel in the park.
"This is very interesting. I am finding bodies of humans, but I have yet to see a dead animal," said Wijeyeratne, whose hotel in the park was totally destroyed in Sunday's tidal surge.
"Maybe what we think is true, that animals have a sixth sense," Wijeyeratne said.
An Associated Press photographer who flew over Sri Lanka's Yala National Park in an air force helicopter saw abundant wildlife, including elephants, buffalo, deer, and not a single animal corpse.
Floodwaters from the tsunami swept into the park, uprooting trees and toppling cars onto their roofs — one red car even ended up on top of a huge tree — but the animals apparently were not harmed and may have sought out high ground, said Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne, whose Jetwing Eco Holidays ran a hotel in the park.
"This is very interesting. I am finding bodies of humans, but I have yet to see a dead animal," said Wijeyeratne, whose hotel in the park was totally destroyed in Sunday's tidal surge.
"Maybe what we think is true, that animals have a sixth sense," Wijeyeratne said.
posted by cvo @ 1:18 PM
3 Comments:
At 3:00 PM,
R said…
Clearly, animals like bats and whales have a sixth sense (sonar), and I've read that some fish can detect very small electric fields. But even considering only the "normal" five senses, it seems likely that most animals have much keener sensitivity than we do, especially hearing and smell. If they do have any "extra sense" I would be surprised if it's anything other than the one we call "common."
At 1:05 PM,
Anonymous said…
LOTS of goats, dogs, cats, cows and sheep were found dead in the affected zones. The ones in the park saved because they were off the coast, because the coast was crowded with people. Show some skepticism, please, don't believe anything you read.
At 1:14 PM,
cvo said…
Oh sure.
Ruin a perfectly good X-Files theory with a little common sense.
However, maybe there is something about "domesticated" animals that robs them of that extrasensory perception and only the "wild" animals still have those survival instincts.
If you need to reach me, I'll be in the basement putting foil on my head to try to block all of the radiation that aliens are trying to transmit into my brain.
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