Do animals really sense disaster?

I have heard of instances where animals won't follow their normal routine, only for some horrible thing to happen. But is this just chance?

These guys think it is more than chance: Scientific American

But they also say that humans need to do a lot more studying to improve the probability.

Things I am pretty sure about:
1. Animals can sense things in different ranges of hearing, vibration, light spectrum, etc than humans can. Some can sense higher, others lower, and that changes over time even within a population. Human women "on average" can hear higher sounds than males can - however the variability and overlap is huge.
2. Animals are much smarter about things that might make them dead than humans often give them credit for.
3. Animals can be trained in many awesome ways to help humans - could they be trained in earthquake detection? US Earthquake Prediction
Or storm detection? (like tornadoes?)

I think there needs to be a lot of studying and consistency would require a lot of training. Humans would need to pay closer attention to all the other creatures, because some of them do seem to have instincts that could give Humans a little extra time to get out of harms way.

Since permaculture is all about observing nature, let's observe our way to some warning signs!

All I know is that my dog can hear the garbage truck long before I can. And they start early when it's quiet.

My wife has been treated for breast cancer in her rt breast for the first half of this year.  All of our pets now sit on her right side only. …never on the left.   Yes, she gets Cat  scans multiple times a day.

And yes, all of our animals get restless as storms approach … no matter what the weather prediction is.  The sky can be clear blue, but they will tell me hours before the storm arrives.

We have a well insulated house, but I get told when the UPS and FEDX truck is 1/4 mile away.

John F Dean wrote:My wife has been treated for breast cancer in her rt breast for the first half of this year.  All of our pets now sit on her right side only. …never on the left.   Yes, she gets Cat  scans multiple times a day.

I read somewhere that dogs could be taught to signal when they sense cancer. A friend of Hubby's had a companion dog trained to tell him if he was getting a seizure with enough lead time that he could safely pull over and stop his car - he was only allowed to drive if this dog was in the front seat beside him.

But things like earthquakes, tsunamis and sinkholes don't normally happen on a monthly basis. Sometimes not for centuries. They'd be a bit harder to train domestic short life animals for. Could we train a tortoise? I've heard some cattle live 40 years. Some birds 80.

When I was a little girl our cat told us about the upcoming earthquake that hit the next morning, we just didn't understand him.  We did notice he was being odd.

I'd go so far as to say that some animals can not only hear and feel scientifically measurable things better than we can and at a wider range, but that they can sense the spiritual plain of existance, as well as not necessarily being limited by time and physical distance from knowledge.  I have come to believe this because my father-in-law's dog knew he was in a horrible car accident even though he was miles away, but she knew when it happened, she was acting really scared and weird at the same time of day it happened, because she is so connected to him.  At the time my MIL and BIL couldn't figure it out, she was at home with them, and then they got a phonecall from the hospital that he was there and potentially in danger, and then it all made sense.  Fortunately he survived.

I have always heard that cow will gather against the fence when bad weather is headed our way ...

On Homestead rescue, Misty said that goats would alert the folks in the event of an volcanic eruption ...

Our cat doesn't know when to come in out of the rain though she always come home dry ...

I grew up not far from the San Andreas fault in California. We had a dog that would tell us about a coming quake several hours before an occurence, though I don't remember her specific behavior. We had a few seconds warning built into the triplex we lived in. One could here it comming from the rattling windows... Whee!

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:

We had a dog that would tell us about a coming quake several hours before an occurrence

This seems like a good way to put it. The dog is not technically "predicting" - it is simply reporting something is happening that humans don't have the senses to feel.
This article https://theconversation.com/can-animals-sense-when-an-earthquake-is-about-to-happen-168483  is suggesting that the definition of "prediction" is different from "early warning".

...what people interpret as animals’ ability to “predict” earthquakes may in fact be reactions to the vibrations or sounds from earthquakes that are too faint for us humans to detect.

However, there are situations where a five minute warning can save a pile of lives, so let's just support acceptable words to describe what's happening and find ways to test the theory and then some way to train animals to help humans do so.

There's so much that's not known. There may only be 1 dog in 5 or 10 or 100 who can reliably identify those early vibrations and sounds that foretell an earthquake is coming. And then the dog has to have a reliable way of telling a human, "earthquake". I read recently of a dog that was trained in pre-seizure symptoms. They were out in public and the dog was giving the signal, but their Human wasn't feeling anything. Then they realized the dog was sensing the pre-seizure symptoms in another person at the event! So even trying to research this sort of thing has all the same challenges that research on any complicated system has.

Step 1 is simply gathering unusual observed behaviours to see if they repeat at other times.
This web-page documents a few, but I don't know how accurate it is. It's too easy to assign "cause" after the fact!
https://www.storypick.com/animals-natural-disasters/

Twenty years ago we had a very small quake in central Virginia, like a 4 or maybe less on the scale.  I was taking a break from splitting firewood, when one of the dogs came running to me, climbed into my lap and some seconds later the metal roof on the woodshed started to vibrate.  The kitchen door flew open with ex-wife #2 yelling "what the hell was that?"

Everyone was fine, the house was OK, and the dog calmed down with a few more minutes of love!  My first and only quake!!!

The dog, I think could hear the earth rattling long before we two legs could.


Peace

I think, in varying degrees, human beings also have senses beyond what our culture recognizes. We are trained not to believe they are real, and we are not encouraged to develop these abilities into useful skills.

Believing this, of course, I believe animals can sense things. Whether they have knowledge prior to the event unfolding or whether they become aware of it sooner than we do, through more sensitive senses, who can say?

Imagine how heightened animal senses are and how awful it must be with the chemicals and scents found in modern day lives.  

Thekla McDaniels wrote:I think, in varying degrees, human beings also have senses beyond what our culture recognizes. We are trained not to believe they are real, and we are not encouraged to develop these abilities into useful skills.

Believing this, of course, I believe animals can sense things. Whether they have knowledge prior to the event unfolding or whether they become aware of it sooner than we do, through more sensitive senses, who can say?

Yep. We're animals too, and I figure we'd do well to remember. The only reason that other animals (of widely different species) would know something that we don't, is that we in fact do feel the same things, but our culturally conditioned rational mind intervenes and tells us "there is no possible way you could sense that, ergo it's not real, you're just being silly." Non-human animals, on the other hand, don't have this cultural filter, and will simply think "something's happening, I can feel it. It scares me, so I should do something about it."

Several years ago we had a couple of earth quakes here in Montana.
Both times I was sitting on our couch and our cat and dog jumped on my lap about a minute before the quakes.
Never did that before or since.

Thekla McDaniels wrote:I think, in varying degrees, human beings also have senses beyond what our culture recognizes. We are trained not to believe they are real, and we are not encouraged to develop these abilities into useful skills.

Believing this, of course, I believe animals can sense things. Whether they have knowledge prior to the event unfolding or whether they become aware of it sooner than we do, through more sensitive senses, who can say?

This session on Oxford Real Farming Conference's 2022 programme had me riveted - it shows how humans can connect on a different - er, dimension?    (1.5 hours)
Animals, wild and farm if they have the range of plants available, can self-medicate. How do they know what to use? Even chimps/bonobos can choose the plant for their ailment. Are we missing on 'listening' to an inbuilt talent?
Dogs apparently detect cancer and other diseases by smell.

John F Dean wrote:My wife has been treated for breast cancer in her rt breast for the first half of this year.  All of our pets now sit on her right side only. …never on the left.   Yes, she gets Cat  scans multiple times a day.

My dog has saved my life twice. Once because I inhaled Valium through a misting device (it seems I’m allergic). According to my neighbors she kept howling and whimpering until one of them checked on me. They found me passed out and my dog jumping on my chest.
The second was when she kept pointing to a certain spot in my abdomen where a 9cm rock was growing was growing in my kidney. Because I trust my dog, I got checked and was immediately put in a hospital for. Surgery was two days later and I rested for two days after.

Jay Angler wrote:I have heard of instances where animals won't follow their normal routine, only for some horrible thing to happen. But is this just chance?

These guys think it is more than chance: Scientific American

But they also say that humans need to do a lot more studying to improve the probability.

Things I am pretty sure about:
1. Animals can sense things in different ranges of hearing, vibration, light spectrum, etc than humans can. Some can sense higher, others lower, and that changes over time even within a population. Human women "on average" can hear higher sounds than males can - however the variability and overlap is huge.
2. Animals are much smarter about things that might make them dead than humans often give them credit for.
3. Animals can be trained in many awesome ways to help humans - could they be trained in earthquake detection? US Earthquake Prediction
Or storm detection? (like tornadoes?)

I think there needs to be a lot of studying and consistency would require a lot of training. Humans would need to pay closer attention to all the other creatures, because some of them do seem to have instincts that could give Humans a little extra time to get out of harms way.

Since permaculture is all about observing nature, let's observe our way to some warning signs!

Yes, I think animals make much better use of their senses than (most) humans do!
So animals can feel very minimal quakies in the earth that can tell them there might be a major eathquake coming. And animals (maybe not all animals, but at least some species) can feel changes in air pressure that tell there's a sorm (hurricane, tornado) coming. Etc.

Some animals can be trained. We all know about dogs trained to find people under the collapsed buildings after an eathquake. And there are dogs too who can feel when someone is feeling sad, and then they know how to react ... probably cats can do so too. Dogs, cats, horses, etc. are animals that can be trained. Many wild animals can not be trained ...

I think people can train themselves (or can be trained by a coach) to make better use of their senses, so they become more able to predict natural disasters.

Riona Abhainn wrote:When I was a little girl our cat told us about the upcoming earthquake that hit the next morning, we just didn't understand him.  We did notice he was being odd.

I'd go so far as to say that some animals can not only hear and feel scientifically measurable things better than we can and at a wider range, but that they can sense the spiritual plain of existance, as well as not necessarily being limited by time and physical distance from knowledge.  I have come to believe this because my father-in-law's dog knew he was in a horrible car accident even though he was miles away, but she knew when it happened, she was acting really scared and weird at the same time of day it happened, because she is so connected to him.  At the time my MIL and BIL couldn't figure it out, she was at home with them, and then they got a phonecall from the hospital that he was there and potentially in danger, and then it all made sense.  Fortunately he survived.

Yes, I think there is a 'sense' that does not (yet) have a scientific name (or 'evidence'). You might call it 'spiritual', I don't know, but anyway it is there. And I know not only dogs (like mentioned here) have it. Humans have it too, but most of us do not have trust in this sense, so they ignore it (or say: it isn't real).
My (late) husband had it and made use of it; he knew if one of his siblings or friends was going to call him. Several times he said he was expecting a phone call from his brother (f.e.) and then a short time later the phone rang! He called this 'telepathy', I think that is the official name for it: having a 'sense' of the thoughts of someone else (mostly someone you know well).  Probably he was able to use this sense because he was from a different cultural background (from Curaçao), where this was not considered 'abnormal'.

I've had a sixth sense for most of my life.  I have tried to cultivate it by listening to it.
Many, many times I have kept myself and others out of danger.
I could list dozens of examples, but only a couple here now.

Was in the Army on peace time training.  Was driving a jeep and saw it rolling down a hill.  Kept an eye out for the hill I saw.  When I got to it I told the LT about my 6th sense and the danger of the hill.  I would not drive down it but advised an alternate route.  Was ordered out of the jeep and someone else was told to drive.  Three people died that day in that jeep.

I was walking by a construction site in Denver many years ago and "saw" a collapse of steel onto a pickup truck.  As I came around the corner I saw the truck and steel behind the fence.  I immediately got the attention of the guy in the truck and waved him over to me.  As he walked over to me, his truck was crushed.

I used to drive tour bus and had a high ranking  Japanese government official and his entourage for a few weeks.  He was impressed with my "ability" to see the future.  I thought it was because I was an attentive bus driver. lol

Doesn't always work, but when I get that "feeling" I pay attention.  No earthquake warning tho.
Wish it would work while out hunting elk.