The Unexplained Powers of Animals
Rupert Sheldrake Ph.D.
 For many years animal trainers, pet owners and
naturalists have reported various kinds of
perceptiveness in animals that suggest the existence of
psychic powers. Surprisingly little research has been
done on these phenomena. Biologists have been inhibited
by the taboo against "the paranormal", and psychical
researchers and parapsychologists have (with few
exceptions) confined their attention to human beings.
According to random household surveys in England and
the United States, many pet owners believe their animals
are sometimes telepathic with them. An average of 48 per
cent of dog owners and 33 per cent of cat owners said
that their pets responded to their thoughts or silent
commands. Many horse trainers and riders believe that
their horse can pick up their intentions telepathically.
Some companion animals even seem able to tell when a
particular person is on the telephone before the
receiver has been picked up. For example, when the
telephone rang in the household of a noted professor at
the University of California at Berkeley, his wife knew
when her husband was on the other end of the line
because Whiskins, their silver tabby cat, rushed to the
telephone and pawed at the receiver. "Many times he
succeeds in taking it off the hook and makes
appreciative meows that are clearly audible to my
husband at the other end", she said. "If someone else
telephones, Whiskins takes no notice." The cat responded
even when he telephoned home from field trips in Africa
or South America.
Since 1994, with the help of
hundreds of animal trainers, shepherds, blind people
with guide dogs, veterinarians and pet owners, I have
been investigating some of these unexplained powers of
animals. There are three major categories of seemingly
mysterious perceptiveness: namely telepathy, the sense
of direction and premonition. |
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Animal telepathy
The commonest kinds of seemingly
telepathic response are the anticipation by dogs and
cats of their owners coming home; the anticipation of
owners going away; the anticipation of being fed; cats
disappearing when their owners intend to
take them to the vet;
dogs knowing when their owners are planning to take them
for a walk; and animals that get excited when their
owner is on the telephone, even before the telephone has
been answered.
As skeptics rightly point out,
some of these responses could be explained in terms of
routine expectations, subtle sensory cues, chance
coincidence and selective memory, or put down to the
imaginations of doting pet owners. These are reasonable
hypotheses, but they should not be accepted in the
absence of any evidence. To test these possibilities, it
is necessary to do experiments.
My colleagues and I concentrated on the phenomenon of
dogs that know when their owners are coming home. Many
pet owners have observed that their animals seem to
anticipate the arrival of a member of the household,
often 10 minutes or more in advance.
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