Unexplained abilities of animals
Over the years, trainers, pet owners and naturalists reported various kinds of insights animals indicating that they have telepathic abilities . Surprisingly, what about these phenomena has been little research. Biologists have a taboo on ” paranormal “, and researchers and parapsychologists focused (with rare exceptions ) their attention to humans.
According to the sample survey in England and the United States , many pet owners believe their animals sometimes communicate with them telepathically. On average, 48 % of dog owners and a third of cat owners say that their pets are responsible for their thoughts and silent command. Many trainers of horses and riders believe that horses are able to understand their intentions telepathically.
Some pets even seem able to tell when a particular person dials even before the machine rings . For example, when the phone rang in the house of a famous professor from the University of California at Berkeley , his wife knew that at the other end of the line was her husband because Viskins their silver tabby cat , rushed to the phone and scraping machine.
“When I pick up the phone , then the cat ‘s meow publishes expressive , which is well heard my husband in the tube , – she said. – If someone else calls , it does not react Vinskins . Cat mewed , even when her husband called home from Africa or South America. ”
Since 1994, with the help of hundreds of trainers , shepherds , blind people with guide dogs , veterinarians and pet owners , I explored some of these unexplained abilities of animals. There are three main categories , seemingly mysterious insight, namely telepathy, sense of direction and a feeling.
telepathy
Common type of alleged telepathic response – it divining return of their owners , cats disappear when the owners are going to take them to the vet , dogs know when their owners are planning to take them for a walk , and the animals are worried when their owner is calling on the phone before as a response to the call.
As rightly point skeptics , some of these answers can be explained by conventional expectations , thin sensory signals , coincidences and selective memory or imagination caring pet owners. This is a reasonable hypothesis, but they should not be accepted in the absence of any evidence . To test these possibilities , it is necessary to conduct experiments .
My colleagues and I have focused on the study of the ability of dogs that know when their owners are coming home . Many pet owners report that their pets are anticipating the arrival of a family member often for 10 minutes or more .
Animals typically wait at the door , window or gate . In sample surveys of households in England and America , on average, 51 % of dog owners and 30% of cat owners said they have noticed this behavior .
I watched terrier named Jaytee , who owns Pam Smart of Remsbatoma , near Manchester , England . Pam took Jaytee of shelter dogs in Manchester in 1989, when he was still a puppy , and they formed a close relationship .
In 1991, when Pam worked as a secretary in a school in Manchester , she left with her parents Jaytee , who noticed that the dog went to the window almost every weekday at 16:30 , at about this time Pam was sent home , and the dog waited hostess came about 45 minutes home. She worked during normal working office hours so that the family suggested that Jaytee behavior depended on some sense of time .
In 1993, Pam quit and become unemployed , is not tied to any patterns over time. Her parents usually do not know when she will come home, but Jaytee still advance premonition of her return.
In 1994 Pam read an article about my research and voluntarily participated in the experiment. In more than 100 experiments, we videotaped behavior Jaytee , who was waiting for Pam.
Jaytee reacted not only to the sound of a car or cars Pam other family members, he was waiting for her arrival , even if it came in other vehicles : a bicycle , train, taxi.
We also conducted experiments in which Pam returned home unexpectedly , immediately after leaving home . In these experiments Jaytee still waited at the window, around the time when Pam came home , although no one knew that she would return .
Data show that Jaytee reacted to Pam ‘s intention to return home when she was many miles away . Telepathy seems the only hypothesis that can explain these facts. All of our published work with Jaytee and Kane with another dog can be found on my website.
Currently Alex Tsakiris conducts reproduction of this study with dogs in the United States. Details of his research are on www.skeptiko.com.
Other animal telepathy , can also be investigated experimentally , for example, the apparent ability of the dogs know when they will take out . In these experiments, the dogs were in a separate room or a wing , and video was recorded continuously. Their owners at a randomly selected time thinking about the walk with them, and then after 5 minutes doing it.
Our preliminary experiments have shown that dogs show obvious excitement when their owner is thinking about how to put them on the street , although they might not know it , using normal sensory means . At other times, they did not show such excitement
The most notable case of telepathy animals I encountered – this African gray parrot with Nikis that has left in its 1400 words – more than any other animal in the world. Nikis uses language consciously and said proposals.
Its owner Aimee Morgan , primarily interested in the study of his linguistic abilities, but noticed that he often responds to what she thought . Aymi and I spent the control tests with random photos in a sealed envelope . In a series of video test Aymi opened the envelope and stared at the picture for 2 minutes , at that time was Nikis in another room on another floor , which took off the camcorder .
In many trials , he uttered the words that correspond to the image, which looked Aimee . This effect was highly significant statistically , and these data can be viewed in detail on the website at : http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Papers/papers/animals/parrot_telepathy_abs.htm.
There is great potential for further research animal telepathy . And if pets communicate telepathically with their owners , it seems very likely that animals have telepathic communication with each other, and that it plays an important role in the wild. Some scientists have suggested that the coordination of flocks and herds may include something like telepathy.
Homing pigeons can find their way back to the attic for a hundred miles in an unfamiliar area . European migratory swallows moved thousands of miles to find food in Africa, and in the spring returned to their places of origin in the same building where they nested earlier. In some dogs , cats, horses and other pets , as well as good sense of direction, and they can make their way home from an unfamiliar area at a distance of many miles .
Most studies on navigation animals were performed with pigeons , and these studies over many decades are only deepen the problem of understanding their ability to DF . Navigation focused and suggests that animals know where their home, even if they are in an unfamiliar place and have to cross unfamiliar terrain .
Pigeons were returning home , even if traveling in closed vans circuitous routes, as the birds that were under anesthesia or transported in rotating drums . They are not guided by the sun , as the pigeons were able to find the house on cloudy days and even at night. Nevertheless , they can use the sun as a simple compass to keep your course .
Although they use landmarks in familiar terrain , they can return home from an unfamiliar place hundreds of miles from home, where there are no familiar landmarks . They can not smell his home hundreds of miles away , especially when he is in the wind , though the smell can play a role in their ability to homing when they are close to familiar territory . Pigeons deprived olfactory scientists were still able to find their homes.
Some biologists hope that the phenomenon of homing pigeons can be explained in terms of the magnetic sense . But even if pigeons have a touch of the compass , it can not explain their ability to navigate . If you have been in an unknown direction with a compass , you’d know where the north and not the direction of your house.
Attempts to explain the inability of conventional navigation of homing pigeons and many other species , requires a sense of direction yet unrecognized institutional science. This could have important implications for understanding the migration of animals and shed light on the human sense of direction , much more developed in the traditional peoples, such as the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert or Polynesian navigators than today’s urban dwellers .
premonition
Very little research has been done in the study of animal apprehension , even in the case of earthquakes and tsunamis , when such a warning can be very useful .
Some misgivings can be explained in terms of physical phenomena such as electrical changes to earthquakes and hurricanes. Other premonitions more mysterious , like a premonition of air raids during World War II, long before the animals could hear the approaching enemy aircraft or worry about the unforeseen catastrophes. Here foresight or premonition may be due to either the ability to go back in time , or blurring the differences between the future , present and past.
All three types of insights : telepathy, sense of direction, and a premonition of more developed in dogs than in humans. We can learn from our pets and animals in nature.
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Rupert Sheldrake – Ph.D., director of the project Perrott – Warrick , funded by Trinity College , Cambridge University. He was a member of Clare College, Cambridge and Fellow of the Royal Society . Currently, the Institute of abstract sciences in Petaluma , California, lives in London . Much of his research in the field of unexplained abilities of animals and humans is contained in his books ” Dogs that know when their owners are coming home , and other unexplained abilities of animals ” and ” Feeling under the gaze , and other aspects of the extended mind “