Do animals have a sixth sense? The 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean caused enormous casualties in Southeast and South Asia, with at least 290,000 dead and missing. In some hard-hit areas, such as Indonesia and Sri Lanka, bodies were scattered everywhere. It was a terrible scene. The media reported that rescuers at the locations were surprised to find very few animal carcasses in this unprecedented havoc. What allowed the animals to escape this catastrophe?
Massive waves swept across the Yala National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Sri Lanka, three kilometers from the coast. After the tsunami, rescuers found that although the reserve was swept away, hundreds of wild elephants, jaguars, and more than 130 different species of birds and other animals living there were safe and sound, and hardly any animals died.
Animals appear to have a sixth sense that allows them to escape disasters
Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka’s Wildlife Conservation Service, believes that animals have a sixth sense and can sense the coming of a disaster, and this allowed them to flee before the tsunami.
National Geographic magazine reported that witnesses saw elephants trumpeting and running to high ground before the earthquake and tsunami. Domestic dogs were reluctant to go outdoors. Flamingos abandoned their low-lying brooding nests, and zoo animals hid in cages and refused to come out.
The Wall Street Journal published that in the minutes before the earthquake and tsunami, witnesses saw a herd of antelope in a wildlife sanctuary in southern India running from the coast to a nearby mountaintop. Some animals from the seaside hurriedly escaped to the inland jungle. Wildlife experts said the sixth sense of animals, which saved animals from the tsunami, was again confirmed in Sri Lanka.
Alan Rabinowitz, president of the Wildlife Conservation Society of New York, told National Geographic: “Earthquakes bring vibrational changes on land and in water while storms cause electromagnetic changes in the atmosphere. Some animals have acute sense of hearing and smell that allow them to determine something coming towards them long before humans might know that something is there.”
Rabinowitz also said that it is not only animals that have a sixth sense, but humans used to have it too. However, humans gradually lost this ability when they no longer needed or used it.
The ancients looked at the celestial phenomena to foretell good and bad fortune, and divination could predict the future. Unfortunately, many human instincts have been lost with the development of modern scientific developments and understandings. People’s spiritual connection with nature has largely disappeared in today’s materialistic world.
Translated by Patty Zhang
