Did animals' 'sixth sense' save them from tsunami?

Did animals have quake warning?

By Sue Nelson
BBC Science correspondent

Wildlife officials in Sri Lanka have reported that, despite the loss of human life in the Asian disaster, there have been no recorded animal deaths.

Waves from the worst tsunami in memory sent floodwater surging up to 3.5km (two miles) inland to the island's biggest wildlife reserve.

Many tourists drowned but, to the surprise of officials, no dead animals have been found.

It has highlighted claims that animals may possess a sixth sense about danger.

Yala National Park in Sri Lanka is home to elephants, deer, jackals and crocodiles.

Sensitive to change

Praised for its conservation, the park is also considered one of the best places in the world to observe leopards.

It is now closed after floods damaged buildings and caused the deaths of tourists and employees of the park and lodge.

Yet, surprisingly, none of the park's varied wildlife is reported to have perished.

Debbie Martyr, who works on a wild tiger conservation programme on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, one of the worst-hit areas in Sunday's disaster, said she was not surprised to hear there were no dead animals.

"Wild animals in particular are extremely sensitive," she said.

"They've got extremely good hearing and they will probably have heard this flood coming in the distance.

"There would have been vibration and there may also have been changes in the air pressure which will have alerted animals and made them move to wherever they felt safer."

There are many eyewitness accounts of birds and animals migrating before earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

The scientific evidence for a sixth sense is lacking, but if the reports are confirmed, they could add to the understanding of animal behaviour and possibly even be used in the future as an early warning system for humans.

Earthquake seems to follow after weird wildlife behaviours. There were two such recorded events in the twentietch century China.

Elephants save tourists from tsunami

Sun Jan 2, 2005 10:03 AM GMT

 
By Mark Bendeich

KHAO LAK, Thailand (Reuters) - Agitated elephants felt the tsunami coming, and their sensitivity saved about a dozen foreign tourists from the fate of thousands killed by the giant waves.

"I was surprised because the elephants had never cried before," mahout Dang Salangam said on Sunday on Khao Lak beach at the eight-elephant business offering rides to tourists.

The elephants started trumpeting -- in a way Dang, 36, and his wife Kulada, 24, said could only be described as crying -- at first light, about the time an earthquake measured at a magnitude of 9.0 cracked open the sea bed off Indonesia's Sumatra island.

The elephants soon calmed down. But they started wailing again about an hour later and this time they could not be comforted despite their mahouts' attempts at reassurance.

"The elephants didn't believe the mahouts. They just kept running for the hill," said Wit Aniwat, 24, who takes the money from tourists and helps them on to the back of elephants from a sturdy wooden platform.

Those with tourists aboard headed for the jungle-clad hill behind the resort beach where at least 3,800 people, more than half of them foreigners, would soon be killed. The elephants that were not working broke their hefty chains.

"Then we saw the big wave coming and we started running," Wit said.

Around a dozen tourists were also running towards the hill from the Khao Lak Merlin Resort, one of a line of hotels strung along the 10 km (6-mile) beach especially popular with Scandinavians and Germans.

"The mahouts managed to turn the elephants to lift the tourists onto their backs," Kulada said.

She used her hands to describe how the huge beasts used their trunks to pluck the foreigners from the ground and deposit them on their backs.

The elephants charged up the hill through the jungle, then stopped.

The tsunami drove up to 1 km (1,000 yards) inshore from the gently sloping beach which had been so safe for children it made Khao Lak an ideal place for a family holiday. But it stopped short of where the elephants stood.

On Sunday, the elephants were back at work giving rides to the tourists on whom the area depends.

German Ewald Heeg, from a small town near Frankfurt, said his charter company had offered his family -- wife, two daughters and one of their boyfriends -- the chance to go straight home, but he had turned it down.

"Our family is OK so we stay here to make our holiday," he said.

"Today, we make a safari. We go by elephants at first, then we make a boat trip."

Elephants save tourists from tsunami

The elephants started trumpeting -- in a way Dang, 36, and his wife Kulada, 24, said could only be described as crying -- at first light, about the time an earthquake measured at a magnitude of 9.0 cracked open the sea bed off Indonesia's Sumatra island.

The elephants soon calmed down. But they started wailing again about an hour later and this time they could not be comforted despite their mahouts' attempts at reassurance.

It seems that they felt the Earthquake itself, from quite a distance away.

I wonder what they sensed an hour later? Obviously, the sea wave was approaching at about that time, but how could they detect it?

Quote:

It seems that they felt the Earthquake itself, from quite a distance away.

Yeah, they felt the earthquake but not simply the joggles from the distant place, as they, I think, would not behave like that in the situation of usual small earthquakes.

Quote:

I wonder what they sensed an hour later? Obviously, the sea wave was approaching at about that time, but how could they detect it?

I do not know exactly what they felt, but I can suppose that they had a strong anxiety toward the sea.

Whatever seems to have caused these animals to perceive danger does not have to move into the supernatural realm just because we do not yet understand the mechanism scientifically. It will likely turn out, I think, to be part of the same sensory level that allows birds to follow migration patterns. There have been several theories for that, including some ability to perceive electro-magnetic fields. In the same way, intuition, if it is ever studied seriously, may end up having a real physiological basis.

Proceedings of The Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Homing pigeons develop local route stereotypy by Dr J Meade, Dr D Biro and Dr T Guilford

The navigational feats of birds have fascinated humans for centuries. Much has now been discovered about the mechanisms birds use to navigate over unknown territory. How birds develop a map of their familiar environment however, remains unsolved. We investigated local navigation by homing pigeons, by using recently available GPS tracking technology, which provides details of a bird's route over the landscape with extraordinary precision. We find that birds develop and stick to individually distinctive routes home, which remain surprisingly indirect, repeating these routes precisely. Our results call into question the established view that pigeons use only their compasses from familiar locations, suggesting instead that their familiar area map is based on the use of visual landmarks. Contact: Dr Jessica Meade, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PS

Senses and dunes helped animals escape tsunami

Sat Jan 15, 2005

By Dayan Candappa
COLOMBO (Reuters) - Wildlife in Sri Lanka's biggest national park survived last month's tsunami, but it was probably keen senses and the lay of the land rather than any mysterious instinct for danger that enabled animals to scamper to safety.

Scores of human corpses were pulled from hotels and bungalows in and around the Yala National Park in the island's ravaged southeast, and the fact that wardens found no dead animals prompted theories that a "sixth sense" alerted elephants, leopards and deer to the impending disaster.

As Yala reopened to visitors this week, officials and naturalists said there was evidence that wildlife fled before the giant waves thundered ashore on December 26.

But it was acute natural senses such as hearing that helped give animals time to flee, experts say.

The beasts also stood a chance because relatively few of them lived in the arid strip of salt flat and sand dune that forms part of Yala's southern boundary as it slopes into the sea. The dunes, reefs and mangroves may also have helped blunt the impact.

"I have been cruising around the park for a few days now and I have not even seen one carcass, not even one of a water buffalo," Daya Kariyawasam, director-general of wildlife and conservation, told Reuters on Saturday.

"All the animals appear to have fled before the tsunami struck," he added.

The walls of water triggered by an earthquake off Sumatra killed almost 31,000 people in Sri Lanka and virtually obliterated the fishing town of Hambantota, near Yala.

The belief that animals have a sixth sense for danger is an ancient one, but experts say it has never been proved.

Although that theory is likely to gain credence as a result of what happened at Yala, some naturalists believe there may be a more scientific explanation.

Naturalist Gehan de Silva Wijeratne, CEO of tour company Jetwing Eco Holidays, said an acute sense of hearing would have warned animals of the tsunami's approach. "It would have given them that crucial few seconds," he said.

Many animals are able to detect ground vibrations imperceptible to humans.

"The feet of elephants, for example, have vibration sensors which pick up and pass on signals to the brain. They are thus able to detect infra-sound, which we cannot hear," said de Silva Wijeratne.

Eyewitness accounts suggest animals had already fled or taken cover when black waves loomed over the popular tourist picnic spot on Yala's coast and crashed ashore, crushing safari jeeps and smashing bungalows to matchwood.

"One of the naturalists in the area at the time reported seeing snakes and lizards up trees that human survivors were trying to climb," said de Silva Wijeratne.

Kariyawasam said he thought the mangroves on parts of Yala's coast had cushioned the impact along with coral reefs and sand dunes.

"That was one reason why the water did not flow further inland, which would have been disastrous for wildlife," he said.

The tsunami swamped about 300 hectares of Yala, which covers 150,000 hectares of jungle.

Environmental experts say mangroves could help dissipate the force of a tsunami by slowing the killer wave's surge on to land.

Indonesia, home to most of the 160,000 people killed by the tsunami, says it plans to replant mangroves ripped out to make way for shrimp and fish farms.

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