Why do virtually no animals die in tsunamis?
March 15, 2011 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
I was born and raised in Southern California, a place where earthquakes are common. And for as long as I can remember, people have sworn by the belief that animals can sense a quake coming before human beings can feel them. This theory rings true with me, in part because, just prior to some of the earthquakes I’ve been in, I’ve witnessed dogs become agitated and start barking nervously. My guess is that dogs, like most other animals, can hear and feel minute vibrations we humans can’t detect. So they instinctively sense that something bad is about to happen. This, of course, is the time-tested theory behind having a “canary in a coal mine” (which happens to be a good song by The Police, by the way). The following videos explore this theory and can help us understand why virtually no animals died in the South East Asian tsunami of 2004 or in the recent Japan tsunami. What do you think of this?
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Unfortunately, dogs also predict (by barking/getting agitated) that there is a person walking by your house on the sidewalk, the person getting out of the car across the street, the dog getting walked near your fence and sometimes that you are walking into a room that you left when they were dozing and didn’t realize you left! 🙂
Great. My dog jumped up barking as if a swat team had barged through the front door last night. :p As if that didn’t make us nervous enough all on its own…