You've seen it portrayed on tv, a horse in the field is making noises and acting nervous, several minutes later a tornado hits the area. Do you believe animals or your pet have a sixth sense and can predict natural disasters?
I can't speak for others, but I absolutely believe this is the case. On vacation several years back we were staying in Ocean City. For days our dogs were acting unusual and not behaving like theirselves, acting nervous and constantly hiding under the furniture. We thought it was because of being in a new surrounding. Because we were on vacation, of course we were too busy to pay attention to the news or weather. A few days before the end of our trip, the skies began to turn cloudy, the winds picked up and the wave surges increased. We had no idea hurricane Felix was about to hit, but my dogs did.
I have seen on television that when the Tsunami happened in 2004, elephants were really nervous and finally ran away up in the mountains. I think that maybe they are more aware of the vibrations than us? That or something that I don't understand
Kotton is terrified of storms and I can always tell when a good storm is coming in because Kotton tenses up and the closer it gets the more she freaks. She has crawled INTO the couch before (during a tropical storm) and did this about an hour before the thunder and wind started. I know dogs sense it, I would imagine the others do too because in the wild they know to seek shelter.
Well, I'm not sure about saying generally that they can sense natural disasters, but they are certainly more stunned to the natural world than most humans. Many mammals, birds, reptiles, & fish can sense slight and not so slight changes in barometric pressure for example, which explains both examples above. Many of my snakes, and one of my cats know when a storm is coming, (this cat is afraid of thunder, I'm sure the others know, they just don't care), which is helpful this time of year here. There is a fish commonly called a dojo loach, also called a weather loach, that the chinese have kept for some hundreds of years, to alert people of incoming storms.
Lala my GSD is quite afraid of the weather and storms and she gets quite antsy if there is a storm brewing. My geese goes crazy as well, but I suspect it might be excitement in their case, they do love a good storm.
While growing up we stayed in a town with a lot of gold mines and the resulting earthquakes. The animals would usually "tell" you if it is coming. The dogs would go mad and then all of a sudden a complete silence follows, it is so foreboding. A few seconds later the shakes start.
Their keen senses would be the source of this early warning system as well as their intuition.
When I was in Florida, you could tell when the hurricanes were close because our wild cats would grow very restless and start pacing back and forth in their cages.
The ducks and turkeys, would huddle in one corner of their cage. Chickens would make a lot of noise.
Our dog would hide under the bed, the safest spot in the house.
We would know when it was close, because when the barametric pressure dropped I would have trouble breathing due to my asthma. The, Hurricane Andrew came very close to where we lived.
I haven't experienced anything with weather or disaster-related incidents, but my dog has always had a sixth sense about when I'm leaving again for school. I go to college a few hours away from home, and the day before I leave again for the semester, my dog gets very sad and sluggish and glues herself to my side for the entire day. This is before I've even started packing anything -- she just knows.
03-10-2013, 10:11 PM, (This post was last modified: 03-10-2013, 10:13 PM by suzjbibby.)
I also have not noticed any particular strange behaviour from animals prior to storms but we had a cat once that seemed to understand what was going on. Our grandmother would come to visit a few times a year for a few days and she had a particular dislike of our cat 'Scorpy' and would chase her away whenever she saw her. Once, the day before my grandmother arrived for one of her visits, Scorpy moved her entire litter of kittens out to a back shed well away from where my grandmother would be likely to go and then bought them back to the house as soon as she left
Yes, most pets are really sensitive to weather. My fish can feel the pressure drop before a storm because they usually like swimming around the top of a tank. But about an hour before a storm hits they will swim close to the rocks at the bottom, in the fake cave, or the roots of the plant because the water in the tank feels shallower than usual.
My dogs weren't usually sensitive or didn't care about the weather change, I could never decide. Most of my dogs love water so they wouldn't act any different. But once it was raining, they would act like toddlers and run around jumping in puddles and enjoy themselves.
My cats though were the most sensitive. Midnight, my outside/inside cat would always come home before it would start to rain. Sometimes the day before or just a couple minutes before it starts raining or snowing. My indoor cats were less sensitive of the weather. But Drew, the older brother, would get extra cuddly with my mom or hide under her desk. His younger brother, Tony, would come into my room and sleep in my bed while I worked or under my bed. Very rarely, he would sleep in my closet during the night because it protected him from the loud sounds of the thunder.
Well, this is not out of the ordinary. I have come to conclude that animals are good predictors of weather patterns. If you find fish swimming close to the water surface, the weather is hot and this usually followed by temperature changes that create pressure differences, pointers of an approaching rainy season. I don't know whether there is anyone is rearing butterflies as pets. There are seasonal migrations of butterflies that herald the onset of the long rains or dry conditions as they look for sources of flowers for their nutritional requirements. There is also the section of burrows and nooks by cats and other domestic animals in preparation of long periods of hibernation. But storms, thuderbolts and lightning are olor stressors of pets and I am at a loss of what recourse one can take to proof them from such conditions.
Yeah, they know, all right. My cat can predict storms by going crazy about 12 to 24 hours before-hand. She bounces off the walls and acts totally goofy, until she just about drives me crazy. That's how I know something is about to happen. Other people recognize it as well. I'll complain that she's acting out of the ordinary and someone will inevitably say, "probably going to storm." Sure enough, it will do so within a day or so. She also knows when my husband and I are going away for a few hours. She can see us bustling around, getting ready to go and she starts to pout a little, sitting with her back to us and her ears laid back. She definitely has her ways of showing her displeasure at what is happening. It's like that in the wild too... when you have beautiful, peaceful weather, the birds will be singing like crazy, and flying around in circles and playing. They're out there having fun and you can tell they have no worries. When a storm is coming the birds act differently, more quiet, and more hidden away. They know some weather is coming and are getting prepared for it. If we humans had that type of internal radar going on, we would probably have a lot less trouble figuring out what to wear, or whether to bring an umbrella. We also wouldn't need meteorologists telling us all the wrong things about the weather.
We had a housemaid whose family was in Leyte, that province which was hit by the strong typhoon in 2013. She said that before the tidal wave occurred in the early morning of that fateful day, her family was wondering why the chickens were noisy and the goats were making sounds as if they were hungry. Her parents tried to ignore the animals because it was already raining hard. But when their dog started barking continuously - not about an enemy but seeming scared - our housemaid's father looked out the window to see afar that floodwater is rising. He didn't know that the water was the aftermath of a tidal wave which the weather bureau called storm surge. Thousands have died due to that storm surge.
It's hard to believe that animals can sense danger. But old folks would tell us that animals have a 6th sense when it comes to survival.
When the weather changes, then the electricity in the air changes, as well as air pressure, and naturally, the temperature often changes as well. We are aware consciously of some of these changes, but animals seem to be able to sense changes that we are not aware of. Some animals seem to be more "tuned in" to these changes than other animals are.
As was mentioned, some dogs and cats can tell when a storm is coming and start to get very anxious; but other dogs will scarcely pay any attention.
I think that dogs who spend most of the time in the house are less likely to notice the changes, although some house dogs are still sensitive to the weather.
There was a man in California who could predict earthquakes, simply from reading the lost and found ads in the newspapers.
He said that a few days before a quake hit that region, pets would start running away and people would then put ads in the paper for the lost pet. When there was a jump in the amount of lost and found pets, then he said that there was going to be an earthquake.
Apparently, most of the time, he was right, and did as good at predicting quakes as the scientists with all of their sensitive equipment could do.
When Mt. St. Helens erupted in Western Washington State, animals in Eastern Washington were able to tell that something had happened. By mid-afternoon (or even before then) all of the birds had stopped singing and had gone to bed in the trees. I am sure that other animals noticed the change also; but the silence of all the birds was what I noteced first. When I looked at the western sky, and it was pitch black, then we knew something bad was coming and went inside to listen to th radio and see what was happening.
